The Crosswalk

From my grandfather Verus — good character and freedom from anger.

From the reputation and memory surrounding my father — modesty and manliness.

From my mother — reverence for the gods, generosity, restraint not only from doing evil but even from dwelling on such thoughts; and simplicity in diet, far from the way of the wealthy.

From my great-grandfather — not attending public lectures, but using good teachers at home, and understanding that one must spend liberally on such things.

From my tutor — neither to be a Green nor a Blue at the races, neither a Palmularian nor a Scutarian; to be patient with hardship and needing little; to work with one's own hands and not be a busybody; to be slow to accept accusations.

From Diognetus: not to be busy about empty things; not to believe what is said by miracle-mongers and sorcerers about incantations, the driving out of spirits, and such things; not to breed quails for fighting nor to be excited about such pursuits; to tolerate plain speaking; to have become at home in philosophy, and to have heard first Baccheius, then Tandasis and Marcianus; to have written dialogues as a boy; to have desired the plank bed and the hide, and all the other things belonging to the Greek discipline.

From Rusticus — the realization that my character needed correction and treatment; avoidance of sophistic ambition, rhetorical display and artificial asceticism; simple letter-writing; readiness to reconcile; careful reading; and acquaintance with the notes of Epictetus.

From Apollonius — freedom, steadiness and unwavering attention to reason; sameness in pain, bereavement and illness; a living example of firmness joined with relaxation; teachability; and the proper way to receive favors from friends.

From Sextus — kindness, a well-governed household, life according to nature, dignity without affectation, care for friends, tolerance, social adaptability, method in moral teaching, freedom from passion joined with affection, and learning without display.

From Alexander the grammarian — to be no fault-finder; not to fasten with reproach on those who let fall a barbarism, a solecism, or an ill-sounding phrase, but adroitly to bring forward just the expression that ought to have been used — in the manner of an answer, or a confirmation, or a joint consideration of the matter itself rather than of the wording — or by some other such graceful reminder.

From Fronto — to observe what malice, variety and hypocrisy attend upon tyranny; and that, generally, those among us called well-born are somehow without pity.

From Alexander the Platonist — not often, and not without necessity, to say or write “I am too busy,” and not to use business as an excuse to avoid duties owed to those who live with us.

From Catulus — not to disregard a friend’s complaint, even if unreasonable; to restore the relationship; to praise teachers warmly; and to love children truly.

From Severus: love of family, love of truth, and love of justice; and through him to have come to know Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato, Dion, Brutus; and to have conceived the idea of a commonwealth of equal laws, governed by equality and equal freedom of speech, and of a kingship that honors above all things the liberty of the governed. And from him also: steadiness and consistency in honoring philosophy; readiness to do good and to give generously; hopefulness; confidence in the affection of friends; openness toward those who met with his censure; and that his friends had no need to guess at what he wished or did not wish, but it was plain.

From Maximus — self-command, steadiness, cheerfulness in illness and circumstance, a balanced and dignified character, credibility in word and deed, freedom from agitation, truthfulness, generosity, forgiveness, and graceful humor.

From my father — gentleness, and an unshaken holding to judgments reached after thorough examination; no vain conceit about so-called honors; love of work, and perseverance in it; a ready ear for anyone with something to contribute to the common good; the undeviating award to each man of what he deserved; the experience to know where effort was needed and where the rein could be slackened; his putting an end to the affairs with boys; his fellow-feeling — allowing his friends freedom not to dine at his table always nor to attend him on his travels, and being found always the same by those whom some necessity had kept away; precise and patient inquiry in his councils — he was not one to break off the search early, satisfied with first impressions; the keeping of his friends, never tiring of them, never doting extravagantly; self-sufficiency in everything, and a bright face; foresight over the long distance, and quiet advance provision for the smallest matters, without theatrics; the checking, in his presence, of acclamations and every form of flattery; constant guardianship of what the empire required, stewardship of its expenditure, and patience under the criticism such things brought him; toward the gods, no superstition; toward men, no courting of the crowd, no ingratiating, no mob-pleasing — but sobriety in all things, steadiness, and never a trace of bad taste or hunger for novelty. The things that make life comfortable, which fortune supplied him in abundance, he used without arrogance and without apology alike — taking them unaffectedly when they were there, not missing them when they were not. No one could say of him that he was a sophist, a house-bred flunkey, or a pedant; rather that he was a ripened man, a complete man, above flattery, able to preside over his own affairs and other men's. Besides all this — his honor for those who genuinely pursue philosophy, without reproaching the other kind, and without being taken in by them either; his easy company, and a graciousness that never cloyed; the measured care of his own body — not like a

From the gods — that I had good grandfathers, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good household companions, kinsmen, friends — nearly all

At dawn, say to yourself beforehand: I shall meet the meddling, the ungrateful, the insolent, the treacherous, the envious, the unneighborly. All these things have befallen them through ignorance of goods and evils. But I, who have seen that the nature of the good is the beautiful and of the evil the shameful, and that the nature of the wrongdoer himself is kin to me — not of the same blood or seed, but sharing in mind and in a portion of the divine — I can neither be harmed by any of them, for no one can involve me in what is shameful, nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him. We were born for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. To work against one another, then, is contrary to nature — and to be vexed with a man, and to turn away from him, is to work against him.

Whatever this is that I am, it is flesh, a little breath, and the ruling faculty. Despise the flesh: gore and little bones and a mesh, a weaving of nerves, small veins, and arteries. Consider too what the breath is: wind — and not always the same, but at every hour expelled and gulped in again. Third, then, is the ruling faculty. Put away your books; strain after

The works of the gods are full of providence. The works of fortune

Remember how long you have been putting these things off, and how many appointed days you have

Every hour attend sturdily, as a Roman and a man, to doing what is at hand with precise and

You wrong yourself — you wrong yourself, O my soul! And you will have no further opportunity to honor yourself. The life of every man is but a moment, and yours is nearly finished, while you do not yet respect yourself, but place your happiness in the souls of others.

Do the things that fall upon you from outside distract you? Then give yourself leisure to learn something further that is good, and stop being whirled about. And now you must guard against the other kind of wandering too: for they are triflers even in their actions who are worn out by life and have no aim toward which to direct every impulse — and, in a word, every impression.

Not easily has anyone been found to be miserable for the reason that he did not pay attention to what was happening in another's soul; but those who do not follow the movements of their own soul are necessarily miserable.

These things must always be remembered: what the nature of the whole is, and what my own nature; and how mine stands related to that; and what kind of part it is, of what kind of whole; and that there is no one who can prevent you from always doing and saying the things that follow the nature of which you are a part.

Theophrastus, in his comparison of wrongdoings — comparing them as one might in the common manner — says like a philosopher that offenses committed through desire are graver than those committed through anger. For the angry man appears to turn away from reason with a certain pain and unconscious contraction; but the one who does wrong through desire, overcome by pleasure, appears somehow more intemperate and more effeminate in his wrongdoing. Rightly, then, and worthily of philosophy, he said that wrongdoing with pleasure deserves the greater reproach than wrongdoing with pain. The one, on the whole, resembles a man first wronged and compelled by pain to anger; the other has set out toward injustice from his own impulse, carried toward doing wrong by desire.

Act, speak, and think in every case as one able to depart from life this moment. To go away from among men is nothing terrible, if there are gods, for they would not involve you in evil. And if there are no gods, or if they do not care about human affairs, what is it to me to live in a cosmos empty of gods or empty of providence? But there are gods, and they do care for human affairs, and they have placed it wholly in a man's own power not to fall into the things that are truly evil; and if there were anything evil in the rest, they would have provided for this too, that it lie in every man's power not to fall into it. (And what does not make a man worse — how could it make a man's life worse?) The nature of the whole would not have overlooked these things through ignorance, nor — knowing them — through inability to guard against them or set them right; nor would it have erred so greatly, through weakness or want of skill, that good things and evil things should fall without distinction upon good men and bad alike. But death and life, fame and

How swiftly all things vanish — the bodies themselves into the cosmos, the memories of them into

Nothing is more miserable than the man who goes round and round everything, who 'searches out the things beneath the earth,' as the poet says, and who seeks by conjecture what is in his neighbors' souls, yet fails to perceive that it is enough to be with the spirit within himself alone and to serve it sincerely. The service of that spirit is to keep it pure of passion, of randomness, and of discontent with what comes from gods and from men. For what comes from the gods is venerable because of their excellence; and what comes from men is dear because of kinship — though sometimes also, in a way, pitiable, because of their ignorance of good and evil: a disability no less than the one that takes away the power to distinguish white from black.

Even if you were going to live three thousand years, and as many times ten thousand, still remember that no one loses any life other than the one he is living, nor lives any other than the one he is losing. The longest and the shortest thus come to the same. For the present is equal for all, and what is being lost is therefore equal, and what is being given up shows itself to be only a moment. No one can lose either the past or the future — for how can anyone be deprived of what he does not have? Remember, then, these two things always: first, that all things from eternity are of the same kind and circle round and round, and it makes no difference whether a man will see the same things for a hundred years, or two hundred, or for endless time; second, that the longest-lived and the soonest to die lose the very same thing. For the present alone is what a man can be deprived of — since this alone is what he has — and what a man does not have, he cannot lose.

Remember that everything is opinion. For what was said to Monimus the Cynic is plain — and plain too is the usefulness of the saying, if one accepts its kernel so far as it is true.

The soul of man wrongs itself most of all when it becomes, so far as lies in it, an abscess and a kind of tumor on the cosmos: for to be vexed at anything that happens is a desertion of nature, within which the natures of all other things are severally contained. It wrongs itself again when it turns away from any human being, or is even carried against him as if to harm him, as are the souls of the angry. It wrongs itself, third, when it is overcome by pleasure or by pain; fourth, when it plays a part, and does or says anything feigned and untrue; fifth, when it lets any action or impulse of its own go toward no goal, and does anything at random and without attention — when even the smallest things ought to be done with reference to the end. And the end of rational creatures is to follow the reason and the ordinance of the most venerable of cities and commonwealths.

Of human life, the duration is a point; the substance, flowing; the perception, dim; the composition of the whole body, quick to rot; the soul, a spinning top; fortune, hard to guess; fame, without judgment. To say it in a word: all things of the body are a river; all things of the soul, dream and vapor; life is a war and a stranger's sojourn; and after-fame is oblivion. What, then, can escort a man through? One thing and one only: philosophy. And this consists in keeping the spirit within free from outrage and unharmed, master over pleasures and pains, doing nothing at random, nothing falsely or with pretense, needing nothing from another's doing or not doing; and

We must take into account not only that life is being used up each day and a smaller part of it remains, but this too: that even if a man lives longer, it is uncertain whether his understanding will remain equal to grasping affairs, and to the contemplation that reaches toward knowledge of things divine and human. For if he begins to dote, the breathing and nourishment and imagining and impulse and all the rest will not fail him; but the power to make use of himself, to reckon precisely the measures of duty, to articulate what appears, and to attend to the question whether it is now time to take himself out of life — the power, that is, for everything that requires a well-trained reason — is extinguished first. We must

We should watch for things like this too: that even the incidental accompaniments of natural processes have something graceful and attractive about them. When bread is baked, some parts split open, and these very cracks, which in a way fall outside the baker's promise, are somehow fitting and arouse a special eagerness for the food. Figs, when they are at their ripest, gape open; and in olives ripened on the tree the very nearness of decay adds a particular beauty to the fruit. The ears of grain bending down, the lion's brow, the foam flowing from the boar's mouth, and many other things — examined in isolation they are far from beautiful, yet because they follow upon natural processes they give an added adornment and draw the soul. So that if a man has feeling for, and a deeper insight into, the things that come to pass in the whole, scarcely anything — even among incidental consequences — will fail to seem to him to fit together pleasingly. Such a man will look on the actual gaping jaws of wild beasts with no less pleasure than the imitations painters and sculptors display; and with sober eyes he will be able to see a certain ripeness and beauty in an old woman and an old man, and the loveliness in children — things not believable to everyone, but only to the man who has become truly at home with nature and her works.

Hippocrates, after healing many diseases, himself fell sick and died. The Chaldaeans foretold the deaths of many, and then fate seized them too. Alexander and Pompey and Gaius Caesar, who so often destroyed whole cities root and branch and cut down many myriads of horsemen and foot-soldiers in the line of battle, themselves at last departed from life. Heraclitus, after so much natural philosophy about the conflagration of the cosmos, died filled with water within and plastered with cow

Do not wear away the remaining part of your life in impressions about other people, unless you are referring it to something of common benefit. For you are deprived of other work — that is, imagining what so-and-so is doing and why, what he is saying, what he is thinking, what he is scheming, and all such things make you wander from the

Act neither unwillingly, nor unsocially, nor without examination, nor pulled in contrary directions. Let no affectation dress up your thinking. Be neither a man of many words nor a man of many occupations. Further, let the god within you be the guardian of a creature that is male, mature, civic, Roman, and a ruler — one who has taken up his post like a man awaiting the recall from life, ready to depart, needing neither

If you find anything in human life better than justice, truth, temperance, courage — in a word, better than your own mind's contentment with itself in the things it does according to right reason, and contentment with destiny in what is allotted apart from your choice — if, I say, you see anything better than this, turn to it with your whole soul and enjoy the best as you have found it. But if nothing shows itself better than the very spirit seated within you, which has subjected its own impulses to itself, which scrutinizes its impressions, which has torn itself away (as Socrates used to say) from the persuasions of sense, which has subjected itself to the gods and cares for mankind — if you find all other things smaller and cheaper than this, then give no room to anything else: once you incline and lean toward it, you will no longer be able without distraction to give first honor to that good which is your proper own. For it is not right that anything of another kind — praise of the many, or office, or wealth, or enjoyment of pleasures — should sit as rival to the good of reason and of the commonwealth. All of these, even if they seem to fit for a little while, suddenly take control and carry a man away. But you, I say, simply and freely choose the better and hold to it. 'But the better is what is advantageous.' If advantageous to you as a rational being, guard that; but if as a mere animal, say so plainly, and maintain your judgment without vanity — only see to it that your examination is made securely.

Never value as advantageous to yourself anything that will compel you one day to break your faith, to abandon self-respect, to hate anyone, to suspect, to curse, to play the hypocrite, to desire anything that needs walls and curtains. The man who has chosen first his own mind and spirit, and the sacred rites

In the mind of the disciplined and purified man you would

Revere the faculty of judgment. In this lies everything — that no judgment arises in your ruling faculty that

Throw all the rest away, then, and hold fast to these few things only. And remember besides that each man lives only this present moment, the instant; the rest has either been lived already or is in uncertainty. Small, then, is the time each man lives; small the corner of the earth where he lives; small even the longest after-fame — and even that passed along through a succession of poor little men who will very soon be dead, and who do not know even themselves, let alone the man who died long ago.

To the maxims already stated let one more be added: always make a definition or sketch of the object presented in impression, so as to see it as it is in essence, stripped bare, whole, and in all its parts distinctly; and tell yourself its proper name, and the names of the things out of which it was compounded and into which it will be dissolved. For nothing so produces greatness of mind as the power to examine methodically and truthfully each thing that presents itself in life, and to look into things in such a way as to grasp at the same time what use each provides to what kind of cosmos, what value it has with respect to the whole, and what to man, who is a citizen of the highest city, of which the other cities are like households. What is it, this thing that now makes an impression on me; of what is it compounded; how long is it of a nature to last; and what virtue does it call for — gentleness, courage, truthfulness, fidelity, simplicity, self-sufficiency, or another? In each case, then, we must say: this comes from god; this by the linking and the spun-together thread of fate and the coincidence and chance of such things; this from my fellow and kinsman and companion — though one ignorant of what is natural to him. But I am not ignorant: therefore I treat him kindly and justly, according to the natural law of fellowship — while at the same time, in matters indifferent, I aim at his true worth.

If you do the work at hand following right reason — earnestly, vigorously, with good will; admitting no side-business, but keeping your own spirit pure and standing ready, as if you had to give it back this moment; if you hold to this, expecting nothing and shunning nothing, content with present action according to nature and with heroic truth in what you say and utter — you will live well. And there is no one able to prevent it.

As physicians always keep their instruments and blades ready at hand for sudden calls of treatment, so keep your doctrines ready for knowing things divine and human, and for doing everything, even the smallest thing, as one mindful of the bond between the two. For you will not do anything human well without referring it at the same time to the divine — nor the reverse.

Wander no longer. You are not going to read your little notebooks, or the deeds of the ancient Romans and Greeks, or the extracts from their writings which you were laying up for

They do not know how much is signified by the words 'to steal,' 'to sow,' 'to buy,' 'to keep quiet,' 'to see what must be done' — which does not happen with the eyes, but with a different kind of sight.

Body, soul, mind: of the body, sense-perceptions; of the soul, impulses; of the mind, doctrines. To receive impressions by imprint belongs even to cattle; to be jerked by the strings of impulse belongs also to wild beasts, to men-women, to a Phalaris and a Nero. To have the mind as guide toward apparent duties belongs even to men who do not believe in gods, who desert their country, and who do anything once they have shut their doors. If, then, everything else is shared with the creatures named, what remains as the distinctive mark of the good man is this: to love and welcome what happens and is spun for him; not to soil or disturb the spirit seated within his breast with a crowd of impressions, but to keep it gracious, following god in good order,

The ruling power within, when it is in accord with nature, stands so toward whatever happens that it can always shift easily to what is possible and what is given. It loves no predetermined material, but moves toward its preferred objects with reservation, and what is brought in against it, it makes material for itself — like fire, when it masters what falls into it. A small lamp would be extinguished by such things; but the bright fire most swiftly makes its own what is heaped upon it, consumes it, and rises higher by means of those very things.

No action at random, and none otherwise than according to a principle that completes the art.

Men seek retreats for themselves — in the country, by the shore, in the mountains — and you too are accustomed to long for such things above all. But this whole habit is most unphilosophic, when it is possible, whatever hour you wish, to retreat into yourself. Nowhere does a man retreat into more quiet or more freedom from affairs than into his own soul — above all the man who has within himself things of such a kind that, bending over them, he is at once in complete ease; and by ease I mean nothing other than good order. Continually, then, grant yourself this retreat, and renew yourself. And let your principles be brief and elemental, such that, met with at once, they will suffice to wash away all distress and send you back without resentment to the things you return to. For what is it you resent? The wickedness of men? Take up the verdict again — that rational creatures have come into being for one another's sake; that tolerance is a part of justice; that men do wrong unwillingly; and consider how many, having quarreled, suspected, hated, fought with spears, now lie stretched out, burned to ash — and at last be still. Or do you resent what is allotted from the whole? Renew the disjunction: either providence or atoms — and all the proofs that the cosmos is a kind of city. Or will the things of the body still take hold of you? Reflect that the understanding, once it has recovered itself and come to know its own power, does not mingle with the breath as it moves smoothly or roughly; and recall, besides, all you have heard and assented to about pain and pleasure. Or will that scrap of fame distract you? Look at the swiftness of the forgetting of all things; the chaos of infinite time on this side and on that; the emptiness of the echo; the changeableness and lack of judgment in those who seem to speak well of us; and the narrowness of the place within which fame is circumscribed. For the whole earth is a point, and of it

If the intellectual capacity is common to us all, then reason too, by which we are rational, is common. If that is so, then the reason that commands what is to be done and not done is also common. If that is so, law too is common. If that is so, we are fellow citizens. If that is so, we share in some commonwealth. If that is so, the cosmos is, as it were, a city — for of what other common polity will anyone say the whole human race partakes? And from there, from this common city, come our very intelligence and reason and law — or from where? For as the earthy in me has been portioned off from some earth, and the moist from another element, and the breath from some source, and the warm and fiery from its own particular source — for nothing comes from nothing, just as nothing departs into what is not — so too the intelligence has come from somewhere.

Death is such as birth is: a mystery of nature — a combining out of the same elements, and a dissolution into the same. Altogether, it is nothing for anyone to be ashamed of: for it is not out of order for a thinking creature, nor contrary to the plan of its constitution.

These things are naturally produced by such people from necessity; and he who does not wish this is like one wishing the fig tree not to have its juice.

Remove the judgment, and 'I have been harmed' is gone; remove 'I have been harmed,' and the harm is gone.

What does not make a man worse than he was does not make his life worse either, nor harm him from outside or from within. The nature of what is advantageous has been compelled to do this. 'Everything that happens, happens justly.' Watch closely and you will find it so — I do not mean only that it happens in sequence, but that it happens according to justice, as if from someone apportioning to each his due. Watch on, then, as you have begun; and whatever you do, do it together with this: with being good, in the sense in which 'good' is properly conceived. Preserve this in every action.

Do not suppose such things as the one who insults you judges or wishes you to judge, but see them as they truly are.

Two kinds of readiness must always be kept: the one, to do only what the reason of the kingly and lawgiving art suggests, for the benefit of mankind; the other, to change course, if someone is there to set you right and turn you from some opinion. But the turning must always come from a certain persuasion — of justice, or of common benefit — and the things preferred must be only of that kind, not because they looked pleasant or brought repute.

'Do you have reason?' 'I have it.' 'Why then do you not use it?'

You came into being as a part; you will disappear into what generated you — or rather, you will be taken back into its seminal reason by way of change.

Many grains of incense upon the same altar — one fell first, another later; it makes no difference.

Within ten days you will seem a god to those who now think you a beast and an ape, if you turn back to your principles and the reverence of reason.

Not as if about to live ten thousand years. The inevitable hangs over you; while you live, while it is

How much leisure he gains who does not look at what his neighbor said or did or thought, but only at what he himself is doing, so that this very thing be just and holy.

The man who is fluttered about after-fame does not picture to himself that each of those who remember him will very soon die too; then again the one who succeeds him, until the whole memory is extinguished, passed along through men who are kindled and put out. But suppose those who will remember were even immortal, and the memory immortal: what, then, is that to you? And I do not say that it is nothing to the dead — but to the living, what is praise, except perhaps for some practical management? For now you put aside unseasonably the gift of nature, which does not depend on someone else's account. What remains?

Everything beautiful in any way at all is beautiful of itself and complete in itself; praise is no part of it. Nothing is made worse, then, or better by being praised. I say this also of the things commonly called beautiful — material things, and the works of the arts. As for what is truly beautiful — what need has it of anything? No more than law has, no more than truth, no more than kindness or self-respect. Which of these is beautiful because it is praised, or destroyed by being blamed? Does an emerald become worse than itself if it is not praised? And gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a knife, a little flower, a small tree?

If souls persist, how does the air contain them from eternity? And how does the earth contain the bodies of those buried in it through so long an age? Just as here the change and dissolution of bodies, after some continuance, makes room for other dead, so souls that pass into the air, after holding together for a time, change and are poured out and kindled, taken back into the seminal reason of the whole — and in this way they make room for those that come to dwell there in turn. This is what one might answer on the supposition that souls do persist. And we must think not only of the multitude of bodies thus buried, but of the multitude of animals eaten every day by us and by the other animals. How great a number is consumed and, in a manner, buried in the bodies of those they nourish — and yet the room receives them, through their turning into blood, through their alterations into air and fire.

What in this case is the inquiry into truth? Division into the material and into the causal.

Do not be distracted, but on every impulse render what is just, and on every impression preserve the

Everything harmonizes with me that is well-fitted to you, O cosmos. Nothing is too early for me, nothing too late, that is in season for you. Everything is fruit for me that your seasons bear, O nature: from you are all things, in you are all things, to you all things return. The poet says, 'Dear city of Cecrops' — and will you not say, 'Dear city of Zeus'?

'Do few things,' he says, 'if you would have a good flow of spirit.' But might it not be better to do the necessary things — whatever the reason of a creature social by nature requires, and as it requires? For this brings not only the good spirits that come from acting well, but those that come from doing few things. Most of what we say and do being unnecessary, if a man strips this away he will be more at leisure and less disturbed. So at each thing one should remind oneself: is this one of the necessary things? And we must strip away not only unnecessary actions but unnecessary impressions too — for then superfluous actions will not follow after them.

Make trial of how the life of the good man goes for you too — the man content with what is allotted from the whole, and satisfied with his own just action and kindly disposition.

You have seen those things; look now at these. Do not trouble yourself; make yourself simple. Someone does wrong? He does wrong to himself. Something has happened to you? Good: everything that happens was destined for you from the whole, from the beginning,

Either an ordered world or a tumbled-together stew, but yet a world; or can some order subsist in you, while in the universe there is disorder?

A black character, an effeminate character, a stiff character, beastlike, cattlelike, childish, stupid, counterfeit, buffoonish, huckstering, tyrannical.

If he is a stranger to the cosmos who does not know what is in it, no less a stranger is he who does not know what comes to pass in it. A fugitive is the man who flees the reason of the city; blind, the man who shuts the eye of the mind; a beggar, the man who has need of another and does not have from himself everything useful for life. An abscess on the cosmos is the man who withdraws and separates himself from the reason of our common nature by being displeased with what happens — for that same nature brings these things which brought you. A severed limb of the city is the man who severs his own soul from the soul of all rational beings, which is one.

One philosophizes without a tunic, another without a book. This other one half-naked: 'I have no bread,' he says, 'and I abide by reason.'

Love the little art you have learned, and rest in it. Pass through what remains of life as one who has entrusted all that is his to the gods with his whole soul — making yourself neither tyrant nor slave to any man.

Call to mind, for example, the times of Vespasian: you will see all the same things — people marrying, raising children, falling sick, dying, making war, keeping festival, trading, farming, flattering, asserting themselves, suspecting, plotting, praying for the death of others, grumbling at present circumstances, falling in love, hoarding, longing for consulships and kingships. And that life of theirs is now nowhere at all. Pass on again to the times of Trajan: again, all the same things — and that life too is dead. Survey in the same way the other records of times and of whole nations, and see how many, after their straining, fell so soon and were resolved into the elements. Most of all, run over in mind those whom you yourself have known grasping at empty things, neglecting to do what accorded with their own constitution, to hold fast to it, and to be content with it.

And here it is necessary to remember that the attention given to each action has its own worth and proportion — for so you will not lose heart, so long as you are not occupied with lesser matters beyond what is fitting.

Words once familiar are archaisms now; so too the names of those much hymned of old are now, in a way, archaisms: Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Dentatus; a little later Scipio too, and Cato; then Augustus also; then Hadrian and Antoninus. All things fade quickly and become matter of legend, and quickly, too, complete oblivion buries them. And I say this of those who shone with wonder in their day; the rest, the moment they breathed out their last, were 'unseen, unheard of.' And what, in any case, is everlasting remembrance? Wholly empty.

What, then, is the thing toward which our earnest effort should be brought? This one thing: a just mind, actions for the common good, speech such as never to lie, and a disposition that welcomes everything that happens — as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from such an origin and such a spring.

Willingly surrender yourself to Clotho (Fate), allowing her to spin together with whatever events she wishes.

Everything is short-lived, both the remembering and the remembered.

Observe continually all things coming to be by change, and accustom yourself to consider that nothing is so loved by the nature of the whole as the change of existing things to make new ones.

You will be dead at any moment, and yet not yet simple, nor undisturbed, nor unsuspicious of being harmed from outside, nor gracious to all.

Look through to their ruling principles, and to the prudent men — what sort of things they avoid and what sort they pursue.

Evil for you does not subsist in another's ruling faculty, nor yet in any turning or alteration of the surrounding. Where then? Where the faculty that judges about evils for you is.

Even if what is nearest to it — the poor body — is cut, burned, festering, rotting, nevertheless let the part that forms opinions about these things keep its peace: that is, let it judge that nothing is either evil or good which can happen equally to the bad man and to the good. For what happens equally to the man who lives against nature and to the man who lives according to nature is itself neither according to nature nor against it.

Constantly think of the world as one living being, holding one substance and one soul — and how all things are referred to its one perception, all moved by its one impulse.

You are a little soul carrying a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.

To things that come to be by change, nothing is evil; just as nothing is good to things that subsist out of change.

Time is a kind of river of things that come to be, a violent stream: no sooner is each thing seen than it has been swept past, and another is being carried by, and that too will be swept along.

Everything that happens is thus customary and familiar, as the rose in spring and the fruit of autumn in summer; for such is also sickness and death and slander and plotting.

What follows is always related to what went before by an inner kinship. For it is not like a counting-off of separate items, holding together only by necessity, but a rational connection; and as the things that exist have been ordered in harmonious arrangement, so the things that come to be display no bare succession, but a certain wonderful kinship.

Always remember the saying of Heraclitus: the death of earth is to become water, and the death of water to become air, and of air, fire — and back again. Remember too the man who forgot where the road leads; and that men are at variance with the very thing with which they most continually consort — the reason that governs the whole — and that the things they meet every day appear strange to them; and that we must not act and speak like men asleep (for even in sleep we seem to act and speak); and not like children of our parents — that is, not simply as we have received things by tradition. And just as, if a god told you that you would die tomorrow or at latest the day after, you would no longer make it a great matter whether it was the day after rather than tomorrow — unless you were utterly ignoble, for how small is the difference! — so consider it no great matter to die after many years rather than tomorrow.

Think continually how many physicians have died, after often knitting their brows over the sick; how many astrologers, after foretelling the deaths of others as if it were some great thing; how many philosophers, after endless argument about death or immortality; how many champions, after killing many; how many tyrants, after wielding their power over lives with terrible arrogance, as if they were immortal; and how many whole cities have, if I may put it so, died — Helike and Pompeii and Herculaneum, and others beyond counting. Run over, too, all those you have known, one after another: this man laid out that one for burial and then was laid out himself; another buried him — and all in a short span.

The whole of it: to look down always on things human as ephemeral and cheap — yesterday a drop of mucus, tomorrow embalmed flesh or ash. So pass through this hair's-breadth of time in accordance with nature, and be dissolved graciously — as an olive, grown ripe, might fall: praising the earth that bore it, and grateful to the tree that gave it growth.

Be like the headland against which the waves break continually: it stands fast, and around it the seething of the water is put to sleep. 'Unlucky am I, that this has happened to me.' Not at all — rather: lucky am I, that though this has happened to me, I continue without sorrow, neither crushed by the present nor fearing what is to come. For such a thing

At dawn, when you wake reluctantly, let this be ready at hand: I am rising for a human being's work. Am I still complaining, then, if I am going to do the things for which I came to be, and for whose sake I was brought into the cosmos?

How easy it is to push away and wipe out every impression that is troubling or alien, and to be at once in complete calm.

Judge yourself worthy of every word and deed that accords with nature, and do not let the blame or talk of others that follows talk you out of it; if a thing is noble to have done or said, do not count yourself unworthy of it. Those others have their own ruling faculty and follow

I walk on through what accords with nature until, falling, I shall rest — breathing out my last into that air from which I draw breath daily, and falling onto that earth from which my father gathered the seed, my mother the blood, my nurse the milk; from which, day by day for so many years, I am fed and watered; the earth that bears me as I tread on it and use it so fully.

Sharpness of wit — that they cannot admire in you. So be it. But there are many other things of which you cannot say, 'I was not born for that.' Furnish, then, the things that are wholly in your power: sincerity, dignity, endurance of toil, abstinence from pleasure, contentment with your portion, needing little, kindness, freedom, plainness, economy of speech, greatness of spirit. Do you not perceive how many things you are

One kind of man, when he has done a good turn to someone, is quick to reckon up the favor owed him. Another is not quick to do that, but within himself he thinks of the man as a debtor, and he knows what he has done. A third in a certain way does not even know what he has done: he is like a vine that has borne a cluster of grapes and seeks nothing more once it has borne its proper fruit. A horse that has run, a hound that has tracked, a bee that has made honey — and a man who has done good — does not know it, but passes on to the next act, as the vine passes on to bear its cluster again in season. So one ought to be among those who do this, in a way, without attending to it. 'Yes — but one ought to attend to precisely this; for it is the mark of the social creature,' someone says, 'to perceive that it is acting socially, and indeed to want its fellow to perceive it too.' What you say is true, but you take the present point amiss; because of this you will be one of those I mentioned before, for they too are led astray by a kind of plausible reasoning. But if you are willing to understand what is being said, do not fear that you will thereby omit any social act.

A prayer of the Athenians: 'Rain, rain, dear Zeus, on the plowland of the Athenians and on the plains.' Either one should not pray at all, or one should pray like this — simply and freely.

Just as we understand the saying that 'Asclepius prescribed for

Do not be disgusted, or give up, or lose heart, if you do not succeed in doing everything according to right principles; rather, when you have been knocked back, return again, and be glad if most of what you do is worthier of a human being — and love that to which you return. Do not come back to philosophy as

Things are, in a certain way, so wrapped in veils that to philosophers not few or undistinguished they seemed entirely beyond grasping; indeed even to the Stoics themselves they seem hard to grasp. And every assent of ours is liable to change — for where is the unchangeable man? Pass on, then, to the objects themselves: how short-lived they are, how cheap — capable of being the property of a catamite, a whore, a bandit. After that, pass to the characters of those who live with you, the most charming of whom it is hard to endure — to say nothing of how hard it is for a man to endure even himself. In such fog, then, and such filth, in so great a flux of being and of time, of motion and of moving things, what there is that can be prized or pursued with seriousness at all, I cannot conceive. On the contrary: a man must console himself and await the natural dissolution — not chafing at the delay, but finding rest in these two things alone: first, that nothing will happen to me that is not in accordance with the nature of the whole; second, that it is in my power to do nothing against my god and inner spirit. For there is no one who will compel me to transgress against that.

To what use, then, am I now putting my soul? At every step ask yourself this, and examine: what do I now have in this part they call the ruling faculty? And whose soul do I have now? Not a child's? Not an adolescent's? Not a little woman's? Not a tyrant's? Not a beast of the stall's? Not a wild animal's?

What sort of things the many take for goods, you may gather from this. If a man conceived of the existence of the true goods — wisdom, temperance, justice, courage — then, with these in mind, he could not bear to hear the old tag about being 'crushed under goods'; it would not apply. But with what appear as goods to the many in mind, a man will listen to the comic poet's line and easily accept it as aptly said. That is how even the many sense the difference. Otherwise the saying would offend in the one case and be rejected — whereas of wealth, and of the windfalls that serve luxury or fame, we accept it as fitting and witty. Go on, then, and ask: should we prize, and count as goods, things of such a kind that — once we have them in mind — the saying would aptly apply, that their owner is so well supplied that he 'has nowhere to relieve himself'?

I am composed of the causal and the material. Neither of these will perish into not-being, just as neither came to exist out of not-being. So every part of me will be assigned, by change, to some part of the cosmos; and that again will change into another part of the cosmos, and so on without limit. By such change I too came to be, and those who begot me, and so backward into another infinity. For nothing forbids speaking so, even if the cosmos is governed in completed cycles.

Reason, and the art of reasoning, are powers sufficient to themselves and to their proper works. They set out from their own first principle, and they travel to the end set before them — which is why such actions are called katorthoseis, 'right-goings,' signifying the rightness of the road.

None of those things should a man hold to which do not fall to a human being insofar as he is a human being. They are not demands on a man; the nature of man does not promise them; they are not completions of man's nature. Therefore the end for man does not lie in them, nor that which fills out the end — the good. Further, if any of these things did fall to a man as his, then to look down on it and stand against it would not be what falls to him; the man who shows himself without need of them would not be praiseworthy; and the man who took less than his share of them would not be good — if these things were really goods. But as it is, the more a man strips himself of these and the like, or endures being stripped of them, by so much the more is he good.

Such as your repeated impressions are, such will your mind be; for the soul is dyed by its impressions. Dye it, then, with a continuity of impressions such as these: that where life is possible, there the good life is possible; that life in a palace is possible; therefore the good life is possible in a palace. And again: each thing was framed for the sake of something; toward that for which it was framed, it is carried; in that toward which it is carried lies its end; where the end is, there too is what is advantageous and good for each. The good of the rational creature, therefore, is fellowship. For that we were born for fellowship has long been shown: or was it not evident that the lower exist for the sake of the higher, and the higher for one another? And above the soulless

To pursue the impossible is madness; and it is impossible that worthless men should not do things of this kind.

Nothing happens to any man that he is not framed by nature to bear. The same things happen to another, and — whether because he does not know they have happened, or because he is displaying greatness of mind — he stands firm and remains unharmed. Strange, then, that ignorance and self-conceit should be stronger than wisdom.

Things in themselves do not touch the soul in the least; they have no entrance to the soul; they cannot turn or move the soul. The soul alone turns and moves itself, and whatever judgments it deems itself worthy of — such it makes for itself the things that present themselves before it.

In one respect man is what is nearest to us, insofar as we must do good to men and bear with them. But insofar as some of them stand in the way of our proper actions, man becomes for me one of the things indifferent — no less than sun, or wind, or wild beast. By these some action may be hindered; but for impulse and disposition there are no hindrances, because of reservation and the turning-about. For the mind turns about and transfers every impediment to action into what is preferred: what would check this work becomes the work itself, and what would block this road becomes the road.

Honor the strongest of the things in the cosmos: that which uses all and governs all. Likewise honor the strongest of the things in yourself: that which is of one kind with the former. For in you also it is this that uses the rest, and your life is governed by it.

What is not harmful to the city does not harm the citizen either. At

Often consider the speed with which the things that exist and that come to be are swept past and carried out of sight. For substance is like a river in ceaseless flow; activities are in continual change; causes in ten thousand turnings; almost nothing stands still — not even what is close at hand; and the infinite gulf

Remember the whole of substance, of which you partake of the very least; and the whole of time, of which a brief and momentary interval has been marked off for you; and destiny — of which how small a fraction are you?

Another does wrong. What is that to me? Let him see to it: he has his own disposition, his own activity. I have now what the common nature wills me to have now, and I do what my own nature wills me to do now.

Let the ruling and sovereign part of your soul stand unturned by smooth or rough movement in the flesh; let it not mingle with it, but circumscribe itself and confine those affections to their own parts. But when, by the other sympathy, they rise into the understanding — as in a body that is one — then one must not try to resist the sensation, which is natural; only let the ruling part add, from itself, no opinion that the thing is good or evil.

'Live with the gods.' And he lives with the gods who continually shows them his own soul satisfied with what is allotted, and doing all that is willed by the spirit which Zeus has given to each man as guardian and guide — a fragment

Are you angry at the man with goat-smelling armpits, or at the man with foul breath? What will anger do for you? He has such a mouth, such armpits; it is necessary that such an emanation come from such things. 'But the man has reason,' you say; 'he can attend and grasp what offends.' Good — may it do you good! Well then, you too have reason: move his rational disposition with your rational disposition; show him, remind him. If he listens, you will cure him, and there is no need of anger. Neither tragedian nor whore.

As you intend to live when you have departed, so you are able to live here. But if men do not allow it, then depart even from life — yet as one who suffers no evil. There is smoke, and I leave the room: why does anyone think it a great matter? But while no such thing drives me out, I remain free, and no one will prevent me from doing what I will; and I will what accords with the nature of the rational and social creature.

The mind of the whole is social. At any rate, it has made the lower for the sake of the higher, and has fitted the higher to one another. You see how it has subordinated and coordinated, how it has distributed to each according to worth, and brought the most excellent things into concord with one another.

How have you borne yourself, up to now, toward gods, parents, brother, wife, children, teachers, tutors, friends, household, servants? Has it held true of you toward all of them, up to now, that you have 'neither done nor said anything against what is right'? Recall both what you have passed through and what you have proved strong enough to endure; and that the story of your life is now full, and your service complete; and how many noble things you have seen; how many pleasures and pains you have looked down upon; how many honors you have passed over; toward how many unkind people you have been kind.

Why do unskilled and ignorant souls confound the skilled and understanding one? And which soul is skilled and understanding? The one that

In how short a time, ash or a skeleton — and either a name or not even a name; and the name itself a noise and an echo. The things prized in life are empty and rotten and small — puppies snapping at one another, quarrelsome children who laugh and then immediately cry. And Faith and Reverence and Justice and Truth are gone 'to Olympus from the wide-wayed earth.'

What is it, then, that still holds you here — if indeed the objects of sense are ever-changing and never standing, the organs of sense dim and easily deceived, the poor soul itself an exhalation from blood, and good repute among such beings emptiness? What then? You wait serenely for either extinction or removal. And until the time for that arrives, what suffices? What else but to reverence the gods and speak well of them, and to do good to men, to bear with them and to refrain from them; and as for all that lies within the bounds of this scrap of flesh and this little breath — to remember that it is neither yours nor in your power.

You can always have a good flow of life, if you can go on a good road — if you can both judge and act in a good way. These two things are common to the soul of god and to the soul of man and of every rational creature: not to be impeded by another, and to hold the good to lie in a just disposition and just action, and to let desire end there.

If this is no vice of mine, nor an action that follows from my vice, and the common interest is not harmed — why am I troubled over it? And what harm is there to the common interest? Do not be carried away wholesale by the impression, but help men as far as you can and as they deserve, even if their loss is in things indifferent. Do not, however, imagine the loss as harm — that is a bad habit. Like the old man who, leaving, asked back his foster-child's top, remembering that it was a top — so do here as well. Indeed — you, lamenting on the rostra! Man, have you forgotten what these things were? 'Yes — but they are objects of great concern to these others.' Is that a reason for you to become a fool as well?

'I was once a fortunate man — favored by lot, wherever and whenever you took me.' But 'fortunate' means: having assigned a good portion to yourself; and a good portion means good turnings of the soul, good impulses, good actions.

The substance of the whole is obedient and ready; and the reason that governs it has in itself no cause for doing evil — for it has no badness — nor does it do anything badly, nor is anything harmed by it. All things come to be and are completed according to it.

Make no difference whether you do what is fitting while cold or while warm, while drowsy or with sleep enough, while ill spoken of or praised — or while dying, or doing anything else. For the act in which we die is also one of the acts of life; for that act too, then, it is enough to 'manage well the matter in hand.'

Look within. Let neither the particular quality of anything nor its worth slip past you.

All existing things will change most swiftly: either they will pass into vapor, if substance is one, or they will be scattered.

The governing reason knows how it stands disposed, and what it does, and upon what material.

The best way of avenging yourself is not to become like the wrongdoer.

Take delight in one thing, and rest in it: to pass from one social act to another social act, with God in mind.

The ruling faculty is that which wakes itself, and turns itself, and makes itself of whatever quality it wills — and makes everything that happens appear to itself such as it wills.

All things are accomplished in accordance with the nature of the whole — for surely not according to some other nature, whether enclosing it from outside, or enclosed within it, or hanging detached outside it.

Either a medley, an interweaving and a scattering — or unity, order, and providence. If the former, why do I even desire to linger in such a random compound and confusion? Why do I care about anything but how, at last, 'to become earth'? And why am I disturbed? The scattering will come upon me, whatever I do. But if the other is true, I reverence, I stand firm, I take courage in that which governs.

When you are forced by circumstances into a kind of disturbance, return quickly into yourself, and do not fall out of rhythm longer than the compulsion lasts. For you will be more master of the harmony by continually returning to it.

If you had a stepmother and a mother at the same time, you would do your duty to the former — and still your returning would be continually to your mother. Such for you now are the court and philosophy. Return to her often, and rest in her: it is through her that the things of the court appear bearable to you, and you bearable in them.

How good it is, when meats and other such foods are before you, to receive the impression: this is the corpse of a fish, this the corpse of a bird or pig; and again, that the Falernian is a little juice of a grape-cluster, and the purple-bordered robe sheep's hairs dipped in shellfish blood; and as for intercourse, a rubbing of innards and, with a kind of spasm, the excretion of mucus. What impressions these are, reaching the things themselves and going right through them, so as to see what they really are! So one

Most of the things the crowd admires reduce to the most general classes — things held together by mere constitution or by nature: stones, timber, fig trees, vines, olives. What those a little more moderate admire reduces to things English from Latin (draft — reference lacked this section): What is one to think of foods and the like? That this is the carcass of a fish, that of a bird or a pig; and that Falernian wine is but a little juice of the grape. So Crates, you see, said even of held together by animal soul: flocks and herds — or, just as crudely, the possession of a multitude of slaves. What the still more refined admire reduces to the works of the rational soul — not, however, rational as such, but skilled in craft or otherwise clever. But the man who honors the soul as rational and civic regards none of the rest any longer; before everything, he preserves his own soul in rational and social condition and motion, and works together with his kind toward this end. Xenocrates himself. Most of the things the crowd admires reduce to the most general classes — things held together by mere constitution or nature: stones, timber, fig trees, vines, olives. The things admired by men a little more refined reduce to what is ensouled: flocks and herds. And things still a little more graceful, to what is held together by a soul possessed of art.

Some things hasten to come into being; others hasten to have been; and of what is coming to be, part is already extinguished. Flows and alterations renew the cosmos without pause, just as the unbroken passage of time renders infinite eternity forever new. In this river, on which a man cannot stand, what could anyone prize among the things racing past? It is as if a man should begin to set his love on one of the little sparrows flying by — and it has already gone from his eyes. Indeed, such a thing is the very life of each of us: like the exhalation from blood, like the drawing of breath from the air. For just what it is to pull in the air once and give it back, which we do every moment, such it is to give the whole power of breathing — which you acquired yesterday or the day before, at your birth — back to the place from which you first drew it.

Not transpiring like plants is to be prized, nor breathing like cattle and wild beasts, nor being stamped by impressions, nor being jerked by the strings of impulse, nor herding together, nor taking in nourishment — that last is on a level with excreting the residue of food. What, then, is to be prized? Being clapped for? No. Then neither being clapped for by tongues — for the praises of the many are a clapping of tongues. So you have given up the scrap of glory too. What remains worth prizing? This, I think: to move and to hold oneself according to one's own constitution — the very end toward which all trainings and all crafts lead. For every craft aims at this, that the thing framed be fit for the work for which it was framed; the vine-planter who tends the vine, the colt-breaker, the trainer of the dog — all seek this. And child-rearing and teaching — toward what do they press? Here, then, is what is to be prized; and if this is well with you, you will not set about procuring

Up, down, in circles are the motions of the elements; but the movement of virtue is in none of these — it is something more divine, and advancing on a road hard to conceive, it goes well on its way.

What a thing it is that they do! They refuse to speak well of the men living in their own time and with them — yet they set great store on being well spoken of by those who come after, whom they have never seen and never will see. This is next door to grieving that those who came before did not make complimentary speeches about you.

Do not suppose, if something is hard for you yourself to accomplish, that it is impossible for man; but if something is possible for man and proper to him, consider it attainable by yourself as well.

In the gymnasium someone has raked us with his nails or, charging head-first, dealt a blow; yet we make no protest, take no offense, and harbor no suspicion of him afterward as plotting against us. We are on our guard, it is true — not as against an enemy, not with

If anyone can refute me and show me that I judge or act incorrectly, I will change with joy. For I seek the truth, by which no one has ever been harmed; harmed, rather, is the one who persists in his own deception and ignorance.

I do my own duty; the rest does not distract me. For they are either soulless, or without reason, or have wandered and do not know the road.

Use the irrational animals, and things and objects generally, with magnanimity and freedom, as one who has reason toward things that have none. Use human beings, as having reason, socially. And in all things, call upon the gods. And make no difference to yourself over how long a time you will do these things — for even three hours so spent are enough.

Alexander of Macedon and his mule-driver, dying, came to the same condition: either they were taken back into the same seminal reasons of the cosmos, or they were scattered alike into the atoms.

Consider how many things, bodily and mental together, come to pass in each of us in the same instant of time; and then you will not wonder that far more things — indeed all the things that come to be — subsist together in the one and whole which we call the cosmos.

If someone sets you the problem of how the name 'Antoninus' is written, will you strain and shout out each of its letters? And if they grow angry, will you be angry in return — or will you gently count through each letter in order? So here too: remember that every duty is filled out of certain numbered parts. Keep these, without being disturbed and without answering the resentful with resentment, and finish methodically the thing set before

How savage it is not to allow men to be drawn toward what appears proper and advantageous to them! Yet, in a way, you forbid them just this whenever you are indignant that they do wrong — for they are drawn altogether toward what appears proper and advantageous to themselves. 'But it is not so.' Then teach them and show them — without indignation.

Death is a rest from the resistance of sense, from the puppet-pulling of impulse, from the wandering of thought, and from service to the flesh.

It is shameful that, in a life in which your body does not give out, your soul should give out first.

See that you are not Caesarified — that you take no such dye; for it happens. Keep yourself, then, simple, good, pure, dignified, unaffected, a friend of justice, god-fearing, kind, affectionate, vigorous for your proper work. Strive to remain such as philosophy wished to make you. Reverence the gods; preserve men. Life is short; one fruit of earthly existence — a holy disposition and acts for the common good. In everything, a pupil of

Sober up; call yourself back; shake off sleep once more. Recognize that they were dreams that troubled you — and now, awake again, look at these things as you looked at those.

I am made of a poor body and a soul. To the body, all things are indifferent — for it cannot make distinctions. To the understanding, all things are indifferent that are not its own activities; and all that are its own activities are in its power. Even of these, moreover, it is occupied only with the present: its future and past activities are themselves, already, indifferent.

Toil is not against nature for the hand or the foot, so long as the foot does the foot's work and the hand the hand's. So toil is not against nature for a man, as a man, so long as he does a man's work; and if it is not against his nature, neither is it an evil for him.

What enormous pleasures have been enjoyed by bandits, catamites, parricides, tyrants!

Do you not see how the common craftsmen accommodate themselves up to a point to the layman, yet hold fast no less to the rule of their craft and never submit to abandon it? Is it not strange if the architect and the physician show more reverence for the rule of their own art than a man for his own reason — which he shares with the gods?

Asia and Europe — corners of the cosmos. Every sea — a drop of the cosmos. Athos — a little clod of the cosmos. All present time — a point of eternity. All things small, quick to change, vanishing. All things come from there — set in motion from that common ruling principle, or by way of consequence. Even the lion's gaping jaws, then, and poison, and every kind of mischief — like the thorn, like the mire — are by-products of those august and beautiful things. Do not, then, imagine them alien to that which you reverence, but reckon up the spring from which all things flow.

He who has seen the present has seen everything — both whatever has come to be from everlasting and whatever will be into the unbounded. For all things are of one kind and of one form.

Often consider the binding-together of all things in the cosmos, and their relation to one another. For in a way all things are interwoven with one another, and in this respect all things are friendly to one another: one follows another in order, through the tensile movement, the shared breathing, and the unity of substance.

Fit yourself to the circumstances that have fallen to your lot; and the people whom fate has given you as companions — love them, and truly.

Every instrument, tool, and vessel is well off if it performs that for which it was framed — though there the framer is gone away. But in the things held together by nature, the power that framed them is within, and remains there. You ought therefore to revere it the more, and to believe that if you hold yourself and conduct yourself according to its will, everything goes for you according to mind. And in the same way, the things of the whole go for it according to mind.

Whatever thing outside your own choice you set down for yourself as good or evil, it is inevitable that — when you fall into such an evil or fail of such a good — you blame the gods, and hate the men who are the causes of the falling or the failing, or who are suspected of being about to be; and indeed we do much injustice through caring about these things. But if we judge only what is in our power to be good and evil, no cause remains either to accuse god or to take a stand against man as an enemy.

We are all working together toward one completed end — some knowingly and with comprehension, others without awareness; just as Heraclitus, I think, says that even those who sleep are workers and fellow-workers in what comes to pass in the cosmos. One man cooperates in one way, another in another; and even the man who finds fault, and the one who tries to oppose what happens and to undo it, cooperates in full measure — for the cosmos had need even of such a man. It remains, then, to understand with whom you are ranging yourself. For he who governs the whole will in any case use you well, and receive you into some rank among the fellow-workers and co-laborers; only do not become the sort of part that is the cheap and ridiculous line in the play, the one Chrysippus mentions.

Does the Sun claim to do the Rain's work? Or Asclepius the work of the Fruit-bearer? And what of each of the stars — are they not different, yet working together toward the same end?

If the gods took counsel about me and about what must happen to me, they took good counsel; for a god without counsel is not easy even to conceive, and what cause could have moved them to do me harm? What would have accrued from that either to themselves or to the common whole, which is their chief care? And if they took no counsel about me individually, they certainly took counsel about the common whole — and what happens to me follows along with that, and I am bound to welcome it and hold it dear. But if indeed they take counsel about nothing — to believe which is impious; or else let us cease to sacrifice, to pray, to swear oaths, and to do all the other things we do at every step as to gods present and living with us — but if indeed they take counsel about nothing of our affairs, then I am able to take counsel about myself, and my inquiry is about what is advantageous. And advantageous to each is what accords with his own constitution and nature; and my nature is rational and civic. As Antoninus, my city and fatherland is Rome; as a human being, the cosmos. The things that benefit these cities, then, are the only goods for me.

Whatever happens to each man is advantageous to the whole. That would suffice. But further, if you watch closely, you will see this as a general rule: what is advantageous to one man is advantageous also to other men — though here let 'advantageous' be taken in the more common sense, of things indifferent.

Just as the shows in the amphitheater and such places offend you, because the same things are seen forever and the sameness makes the spectacle wearisome, so it is with the

Think continually of men of every kind, of every calling and every nation, who have died — bringing the thought down as far as Philistion, Phoebus, and Origanion. Pass now to the other tribes. We must change to that place where so many marvelous orators are; so

Whenever you wish to gladden yourself, think on the excellences of those who live with you: the energy of one, the modesty of another, the open-handedness of a third, and some other quality in each. For nothing gladdens so much as the likenesses of the virtues showing forth in the characters of those

Are you vexed at weighing only so many pounds and not three hundred? So then, do not be vexed either that you must live only so many years and not longer. For as you are content with the amount of substance marked off for you, so be content also with the time.

Try to persuade them; but act even against their will when the reasoning of justice so leads. If, however, someone uses force to block you, change over to contentment and freedom from distress, and use the hindrance for another virtue. Remember that your impulse was with reservation — you were not reaching for the impossible. For what, then? An impulse of just this kind. And that you attain: what we were set in motion toward, comes to pass.

The lover of glory takes another's activity to be his own good;

It is possible to form no opinion at all about this thing, and not to be troubled in soul; for things in themselves have no nature that produces our judgments.

Accustom yourself to attend, undistracted, to what another is saying — and, so far as possible, be inside the speaker's soul.

What does not benefit the hive does not benefit the bee either.

If the sailors spoke ill of the helmsman while he steered, or the sick of the physician while he healed, would either attend to anyone else? Or how would the one accomplish the safety of those who sail, or the other the health of those under treatment?

How many of those with whom I entered the cosmos have already departed!

To the jaundiced, honey appears bitter; to those bitten by a mad dog, water is a terror; and to little children, the ball is a beautiful thing. Why, then, am I angry? Or does the false judgment seem to you to have less power than bile in the jaundiced man, or venom in the one bitten?

No one will prevent you from living by the reason of your own nature; nothing will happen to you contrary to the reason of the common nature.

What sort of people they are whom men wish to please — and by what gains, and through what kinds of actions! How swiftly eternity will cover all things — and how much it has covered already. English from Latin (draft — reference lacked this section): What sort of men are they whom these people wish to please, and by what gains, and through what manner of deeds! How swiftly eternity will cover all things — and how many it has already covered!

What is vice? It is what you have often seen. And at everything that happens, keep this ready at hand: this is what you have often seen. Everywhere, up and down, you will find the same things — the things that fill the old histories, the middle ones, the recent; that fill the cities and the houses now. Nothing is new: all things are both familiar and short-lived.

Your doctrines live. For how else can they be deadened, unless the impressions that correspond to them are extinguished? And it lies with you to rekindle those continually. 'I am able to judge of this thing as I ought.' If I am able, why am I disturbed? The things outside my understanding are nothing at all to my understanding. Learn this, and you stand upright. You can live again: look at things once more as you used to look at them — for in this is the living again.

Empty eagerness for pageantry; dramas on the stage; flocks, herds; spear-flourishes; a little bone thrown to puppies; a crumb tossed into the fish-ponds; the labors and load-carryings of ants; the scurryings of startled mice; little puppets pulled by strings. In the midst of these things one must stand kindly, and without snorting contempt — yet understand that each man is worth just as much as the things he has been earnest about.

One must follow what is said word by word, and what is done impulse by impulse. In the case of words, immediately see to what end the reference is made; in the case of actions, watch what is meant.

Is my understanding sufficient for this, or is it not? If it is sufficient, I use it for the work as an instrument given by the nature of the whole. If it is not, either I step aside from the work in favor of one able to accomplish it better — unless for some reason this is not my duty — or I do it as I can, taking to help me a man who, with the use of my ruling faculty, can do what is now timely and useful for the community. For whatever I do, by myself or with another, must aim only at this: what is useful to the community and fits well with it.

How many who became much celebrated have already been handed over to oblivion, and how many who celebrated them have long since departed.

Do not be ashamed of being helped; for your task is to do what falls to you like a soldier in a siege. What then, if you are limping and cannot climb to the battlements alone, but can do it with another?

Do not let future things disturb you; for you will come to them, if need be, carrying the same reason you now use against present things.

All things are interwoven with one another, and the binding is sacred, and scarcely anything is alien to anything else; for all things have been ranged together and jointly order the same cosmos. For there is one cosmos out of all things, and one god through all things, and one substance, and one law — one reason common to all intelligent creatures — and one truth; if indeed there is also one perfecting of creatures of the same kind, who share the same reason.

Everything material is very quickly absorbed into the substance of the whole, and every cause is very quickly taken up into the reason of the whole, and the memory of everything is very quickly buried in eternity.

For a rational living being, the same action is both according to nature and according to reason.

Upright, or being made upright.

What the limbs of the body are in organisms that are unified, this relation the rational beings have in their separate bodies — framed for one single working-together. The thought of this will come home to you more if you say to yourself often: I am a limb (melos) of the system made up of rational beings. But if, by the change of one letter, you call yourself merely a part (meros), you do not yet love men from the heart; doing good does not yet delight you as a completed end in itself; you still do it as a bare duty — not yet as one doing good to himself.

Whatever it wills, let it strike from without upon those capable of being affected by such a blow; for those things that are struck will complain if they wish. But I, if I do not judge that what has happened is an evil, have not yet been harmed — and it is within my power not to judge.

Whatever anyone does or says, I must be good — just as if gold or emerald or purple were always saying: whatever anyone does or says, I must be an emerald and keep my own color.

The ruling faculty does not trouble itself — does not, I mean, frighten itself, or drive itself to desire. If

Happiness — eudaimonia — is a good daimon, a good guiding spirit within. What, then, are you doing here, impression? Go away, by the gods, the way you came: I have no need of you. You have come according to old habit. I am not angry with you — only go.

Is someone afraid of change? Why — what can come to be without change? And what is dearer or more proper to the nature of the whole? Can you yourself take a hot bath unless the firewood changes? Can you be nourished unless the food changes? Can anything else useful be accomplished without change? Do you not see, then, that your own changing is just like these — and just as necessary to the nature of the whole?

Through the substance of the whole, as through a winter torrent, all bodies pass on their way — connatural with the whole and working together with it, as our limbs work with one another. How many a Chrysippus, how many a Socrates, how many an Epictetus has eternity already swallowed! And let the same thought strike you about every man whatsoever, and every thing.

One thing alone distracts me: lest I myself do something that the constitution of a human being does not will, or in a way it does not will, or what it does not will at this moment.

Near is your forgetting of all things, and near is the forgetting of you by all things.

It is characteristic of a human being to love even those who err. This happens if it strikes you simultaneously that they are your kin and

The nature of the whole has molded from the whole substance, as from wax, first a little horse, then dissolving it, used its matter for a tree, then for a little man, then for something else.

A scowling face is utterly against nature; and when the look is often assumed, all its seemliness begins to die, until at the last it is extinguished altogether and cannot be rekindled at all. Try to attend to this very point: that it is contrary to reason. For if even the consciousness of doing wrong departs, what reason for living remains?

All that you see, the nature that governs all will very soon change, and will make other things from their substance, and again others from

When someone does you a wrong, consider at once what judgment of good or evil he held when he did it. For when you see this, you will pity him, and neither wonder nor be angry. For either you yourself still hold the same thing as he does to be good, or something else of the same kind — and then you must pardon him. But if you no longer hold such things to be goods and evils, you will the more easily be kind to one whose sight is dim.

Do not think of absent things as already present, but pick out the best of what is present and remind yourself, on account of these, how eagerly they would be sought if they were not present.

Withdraw into yourself; it is the nature of the rational ruling faculty to be self-sufficient when acting justly and to have peace in this very thing.

Wipe out the impression. Stop the puppet-string pulling. Circumscribe the present moment. Recognize what is happening to you or to another. Divide and distribute the subject into its causal and material parts.

Stretch your understanding alongside what is being said. Let the mind penetrate into what is happening and into the one acting.

Brighten yourself with simplicity, with self-respect, and with indifference toward what lies between virtue and vice. Love the human race. Follow god. That sage says, 'All things are by convention; in truth, only the elements' — but it is enough to remember that all things are by convention. That, already, is very little.

On death: either scattering, if there are atoms; or if unity, then either extinction or migration.

On pain: what is unbearable takes you out, but what is chronic is bearable; and the mind keeps its own calm through withdrawal from the passion.

On glory: look at their minds — what they are like, what they flee, what they pursue. And consider that, as the sandbanks drifting one upon another hide the earlier ones, so in life the things that came before are most swiftly covered by what is carried in on top of them.

"He then who has a magnificent mind and contemplation of all time and all substance — do you think that human life seems great to him?" "Impossible," said he. "Then such a one will not regard death as anything terrible?" "Least of all."

"It is kingly to do well and to be spoken ill of."

It is shameful for the face to be obedient and shaped and adorned as the mind commands, but for the mind itself not to be shaped and adorned by itself.

For one must not be angry at things; for they have no concern about anything.

May you give joy to the immortal gods and to us.

To reap life like a fruitful stalk of grain — this one existing, that one not.

If I and my children have been neglected by the gods, this too has its reason.

For goodness is with me, and justice.

One must not join in mourning, nor share in the throbbing of distress.

"But I could give a just argument against this: that you do not speak rightly, O man, if you think that a man of any worth at all ought to calculate the risk of living or dying..."

"For so it is, O men of Athens, in truth: wherever a man has placed himself, either having judged it best, or having been placed by a commander, there it is necessary, as it seems to me, to remain and face the danger..."

'No, my friend — consider whether the noble and the good may not be something other than saving and being saved. For surely mere living, for this or that length of time, is not a thing to be clutched at by a man who is truly a man; he must not cling to life, but commit these things to god, and — believing the

Observe the courses of the stars as if running with them, and continually contemplate the transformations of the elements into one another; for such mental images provide a purification from the filth of earthly life.

And when making observations about human beings, look also at earthly things as if from somewhere above: flocks, armies, farms, marriages, separations, births, deaths, the tumult of the forum...

Review the past, the many changes of governments; it is possible also to foresee the future; for it will certainly be of the same kind and cannot depart from the rhythm of what is now happening.

What is born from earth returns to earth, and what has sprouted from ethereal seed has returned again to the ethereal pole.

Or this: dissolution of the mutual entanglements among atoms and such a scattering of the impassive elements.

Deflecting the stream with food and drink and spells so as not to die — but the wind that blows from the divine it is necessary to endure with uncomplaining toil.

"More skilled at horsemanship" — but not more social, not more modest, not more disciplined in facing what happens, not more kind toward the failures of neighbors.

Wherever a task can be accomplished according to the reason common to gods and men, there is nothing to fear; for wherever it is possible to obtain benefit through action that is going well and proceeding according to one's constitution, there no harm need be suspected.

Everywhere and always it is in your power to be devoutly satisfied with the present circumstance, to deal justly with the people present, and to apply skill to the present impression, so that nothing incomprehensible may slip in.

Do not look around at the ruling faculties of others, but look straight on, toward what nature leads you to — the nature of the whole, through what happens to you, and your own nature, through what must be done by you. Each being must do what follows from its constitution; and the rest of things have been constituted for the sake of the rational, just as in everything else the lower exist for the sake of the higher — but the rational for the sake of one another. The first thing, then, in man's constitution is the social; the second, resistance to the affections of the body — for it is the property of rational and intelligent movement to set bounds for itself, and never to be conquered by movements of sense or impulse, both of which are of the animal kind; whereas the movement of intelligence claims first place, and will not be mastered by them. And justly so: it was framed by nature to make use of them all. Third in the rational constitution stands freedom from rashness and from deception. Holding fast to these, then, let

As if already dead and having not yet lived up to now, live what remains from the remainder according to nature.

Love only what happens and is spun together for you; for what could be more fitting?

At each event, keep before your eyes those to whom the same things happened — and then they were vexed, treated it as a strange thing, complained. And now where are they? Nowhere. Well then — do you too want to be like that? Why not leave the alien turnings to those who turn and are turned, and give yourself wholly to the question of how to use these events? For you will use them well, and they will be material for you. Only attend, and will yourself to be noble in everything you do; and remember both things — that what you do matters, and that the field where the action occurs is indifferent.

Dig within; within is the source of good, and it is always capable of welling up, if you always dig.

The body too should stand firm and not be flung about, whether in motion or at rest. For just as the understanding shows a certain something in the face, keeping it intelligent and seemly, the same should be demanded of the whole body. But all this must be observed without affectation.

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, in that one must stand ready and unshaken against what falls upon one and was not foreseen.

Continually observe who these people are from whom you want to receive testimony, and what ruling faculties they have.

"Every soul," he says, "is involuntarily deprived of truth"; so then also of justice and temperance and kindness and everything of that sort.

At every pain let this be at hand: that it is nothing shameful, nor does it make the steering mind any worse — for the mind is destroyed neither in its rational nor in its social character. Against most pains, moreover, let the saying of Epicurus help you: that pain is neither unendurable nor everlasting, if you keep its limits in memory and do not add opinion to it. And remember this too: that many things we find irksome are pains without our perceiving them as such — drowsiness, for instance, and burning heat, and loss of appetite. So when you are discontented at any of these, say to yourself: I am giving in to pain.

Take care lest you ever experience toward the inhuman what the inhuman experience toward humans.

How do we know that Telauges was not superior in character to Socrates? It is not enough that Socrates died a more famous death, and disputed more adroitly with the sophists, and held out more hardily through the night in the frost, and, when ordered to arrest the man of Salamis, judged it nobler to refuse, and 'carried his head high in the streets' — a detail one might well question, if it was even true. No: what must be examined is this — what kind of soul Socrates had, and whether he could be content with being just toward men and holy toward the gods; neither resenting wickedness at random, nor serving anyone's ignorance, nor receiving anything allotted from the whole as strange, nor enduring it as unbearable, nor surrendering his mind to sympathy with the affections of the flesh.

Nature did not blend you with the compound so thoroughly as not to permit you to set your own boundary and to bring what is your own under your own power. Remember this always; and this too: that the happy life rests on very few things. And do not, because you have given up hope of becoming a dialectician or a natural philosopher, despair on that account of being free, self-respecting, social, and obedient to god. For it is entirely possible to become a godly man — and be recognized by no one.

To live out one's life unforced, in the greatest cheerfulness of spirit, even if all men shout against you whatever they please, even if wild beasts tear apart the poor limbs of this lump that has grown around you. For what, in all this, prevents the understanding from keeping itself in calm — in true judgment about what surrounds it, and in ready use of what is thrown to it? So that the judgment says to what befalls: 'This is what you are in essence, even if in opinion you appear otherwise'; and the use says to what comes under hand: 'You are what I was looking for. For the present is always material for me — material for rational and civic virtue, and in sum for the art of a human being or a god.' For everything that happens is made one's own for god or for man; nothing is new or hard to handle — all is familiar and ready to be worked.

This is what the perfection of character consists in: to spend every day as if it were the last, and neither to be agitated nor numbed nor to play a role.

The gods, being immortal, do not take it ill that in so great an eternity they must endure so many and such bad people; indeed they also care for them in all manner of ways. But you, who will cease in a moment, do you give out...?

It is ridiculous not to flee one's own vice, which is possible, but to flee the vice of others, which is impossible.

What the rational and civic power finds to be neither intelligent nor social, it rightly judges to be inferior to itself.

When you have done good and another has received it, why do you go on, like the fools, seeking a third thing besides — to be seen to have done good, or to get a return?

No one grows weary of being benefited; and benefit is action according to nature. Do not grow weary, then, of being benefited — in the very act of benefiting. The nature of the whole set itself in motion toward the making of a cosmos. And now, either everything that comes to be comes by way of consequence, or else even the chief things, toward which the ruling principle of the cosmos directs its own impulse, are without reason. Remembering this will make you calmer in the face of many things.

This too tends against vainglory: that you can no longer claim to have lived your whole life as a philosopher, or even your life since youth; to many others, and to yourself as well, it has become plain that you are far from philosophy. You have been muddled, then — so that to acquire the reputation of a philosopher is no longer easy for you; and your station in life fights against it too. If, then, you have truly seen where the matter lies, put away the question of how you will appear, and be content if you live the remainder of your life, whatever its length, as your nature wills. Consider, then, what it wills, and let nothing else distract you. For you have made trial and wandered through how many things without finding the good life anywhere — not in syllogisms,

At every action ask yourself: how does this stand with me? Shall I not repent of it? A little while and I am dead, and everything is gone from the scene. What more do I seek, if the present work is that of an intelligent and social creature, under the same law as god?

Alexander and Gaius and Pompey — what are they beside Diogenes and Heraclitus and Socrates? These men saw things, and their causes, and their materials, and their ruling faculties were sufficient to themselves; but as for those others — how much there was to provide for, and of how many things they were slaves!

Remember that men will do the very same things nonetheless,

First: be not disturbed; for all things follow the nature of the whole, and in a little while you will be no one and nowhere — as Hadrian is not, and Augustus is not. Next: fix your gaze on the matter and see it as it is; and remembering that you must be a good man, and what man's nature demands, do it without looking back — and speak as appears to you most just. Only: with kindness, with modesty, without pretense.

The nature of the whole has this work: to transfer what is here to there, to change it, to lift it hence and carry it yonder. All things are turnings — but equal, too, are the apportionings. All things are familiar; there is no ground to fear anything new.

Every nature is content with itself when it goes well on its way; and a rational nature goes well on its way when it gives assent to nothing false or unclear among its impressions, directs its impulses only to acts for the common good, confines its desires and aversions to what is in our power, and welcomes everything assigned by the common nature. For it is a part of that nature, as the leaf's nature is part of the plant's — except that there the leaf's nature is part of a nature without sense or reason and capable of being hindered, while man's nature is part of a nature unhindered, intelligent, and just; seeing that it gives to each, equally and according to worth, its shares of time, substance, cause, activity, and circumstance. But look not for equality between one thing and one thing in every case; look rather at the whole of this one taken together against the whole of that other.

You cannot read. But you can hold back insolence; you can rise above pleasures and pains; you can be superior to the scrap of fame; you can refrain from anger at the unfeeling and the ungrateful — and, more, you can care for them.

Let no one any longer hear you finding fault with life at court — nor let yourself hear it.

Repentance is a kind of self-reproach for having let something useful pass by; but the good must be something useful, and the perfect and good man must attend to it. Now no perfect and good man would ever repent of having let a pleasure pass. Pleasure, therefore, is neither useful nor good.

This thing — what is it in itself, in its own constitution? What is its substance and material? What its cause? What does it do in the cosmos? And for how long a time does it subsist?

When you wake from sleep with reluctance, remember that to render social acts is according to your constitution and according to human nature, while sleeping is shared with the irrational animals too. And what is according to each being's nature is more proper to it, more native — and indeed more pleasant.

Wipe out impressions, saying continually to yourself: it is now in my power that in this soul there be no wickedness, no desire, no disturbance at all; but seeing all things as they are, I use each according to its worth. Remember this power that nature gives you.

Whomever you meet, say to yourself at once: what doctrines does this man hold about goods and evils? For if he holds such-and-such doctrines about pleasure and pain and what produces each, about fame and obscurity, death and life, it will seem to me nothing wonderful or strange if he does such-and-such things; and I shall remember that he is compelled to act so.

Remember that, as it is shameful to be surprised that the fig tree bears figs, so it is shameful to be surprised that the cosmos bears the crop it is the bearer of. And for a physician or a helmsman it is shameful to be surprised that this man has a fever, or that a headwind has sprung up.

Remember that to change your mind and to follow the one who sets you right are equally acts of freedom. For the action is yours, carried through according to your own impulse and judgment — indeed, according to your own mind.

If it is in your power, why do you do it? If in another's, whom do you blame — the atoms, or the gods? Either is madness. No one is to be blamed. For if you can, set the man right; if you cannot do that, set right at least the thing itself; and if you cannot even do that, what further purpose does blaming serve? Nothing should be done without purpose.

What dies does not fall outside the cosmos. If it remains here and changes here, it is also dissolved here into the everlasting things, which are the elements of the cosmos — and yours. And they too change, and do not murmur.

Each thing has come to be for some purpose — a horse, a vine. Why do you wonder? The Sun too will say: I came to be for a certain work; and so the rest of the gods. For what, then, did you?

Nature has aimed, in each thing, no less at its ending than at its beginning and its course — like a man tossing up a ball. What good is it, then, to the little ball to rise, or harm to come down and even to fall? What good to the bubble to hold together, or harm to be dissolved? And the same of a lamp.

Turn it inside out and see what it is like — and what it becomes when it grows old, or falls sick, or plays the harlot.

Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, the rememberer and the remembered. And all of it in a corner of this region of the earth — where not even all are in accord, nor any man with himself; and the whole earth itself a point.

Attend to what is before you — the object, the activity, the doctrine, or the meaning.

You suffer these things justly; for you would rather become good tomorrow than be good today.

Am I doing something? I do it referring it to the benefit of mankind. Does something happen to me? I receive it referring it to the gods, and to the source of all things, from which everything that comes to pass is spun together.

Such as bathing appears to you — oil, sweat, filth, greasy water, everything disgusting — such is every part of life, and every object in it.

Lucilla buried Verus, then Lucilla was buried; Secunda buried Maximus, then Secunda; Epitynchanus buried Diotimus, then Epitynchanus; Antoninus buried Faustina, then Antoninus. All things are so: Celer buried Hadrian, then Celer. And those sharp wits, those foretellers of the future or men swollen with pride — where are they? Sharp wits like Charax and Demetrius and Eudaemon and their kind. All ephemeral, long dead; some remembered not even for a moment; some turned into legends; some already faded even out of legend. Remember, then, this: that your little compound must either be scattered, or your bit of breath be quenched — or else removed, and stationed elsewhere.

The joy of a man is to do what is proper to a man. And proper to a man are: good will toward his own kind; disdain of the movements of the senses; the diagnosis of plausible impressions; the contemplation of the nature of the whole and of what comes to pass according to it.

Three relations: the one to the body that surrounds you; the one to the divine cause, from which all

Pain is either an evil to the body — then let the body declare it — or to the soul. But the soul has power to preserve its own clear sky and calm, and not to take pain for an evil. For every judgment and impulse and desire and aversion is within — and no evil climbs in here.

Wipe out impressions, saying continually to yourself: it is now in my power that in this soul there be no wickedness, no desire, no disturbance at all; but seeing all things as they are, I use each according to its worth. Remember this power that nature gives you.

Speak, both in the senate and to every person whatsoever, with decorum and without grandiloquence. Use sound speech.

The court of Augustus — wife, daughter, grandsons, stepsons, sister, Agrippa, kinsmen, household, friends, Areius, Maecenas, physicians, sacrificers: the death of an entire court. Then pass on to the others — not the death of a single man, but of a whole line, like the Pompeii. And that inscription set on tombs: Last of his house. Reckon up how much those before them strained that they might leave a successor — and then someone must, of necessity, be last. Here again: the death of a whole house.

One must compose one's life action by action, and be content if each action achieves its own end as far as possible — and no one can prevent it achieving its end. 'But something from outside will stand in the way.' Nothing can — not against acting justly, temperately, and with sound reason. 'But perhaps some other activity will be hindered.' Yes — but by welcoming the hindrance itself, and by a graceful change to what is granted, another action at once takes its place, one that fits into the composition of which we are speaking.

Receive without pride; let go without struggle.

If you have ever seen a severed hand or foot, or a head cut off, lying somewhere apart from the rest of the body — such a thing does the man make of himself, so far as in him lies, who refuses to accept what happens and cuts himself off, or who does some unsocial act. You have been cast away, somewhere, from the unity that accords with nature — for you grew as a part, and now you have cut yourself off. Yet here is the gracious thing: it is in your power to unite yourself again. To no other part has god granted this — to come together again after being separated and cut apart. But consider the kindness

If you have ever seen a severed hand or foot, or a head cut off, lying somewhere apart from the rest of the body — such a thing does the man make of himself, so far as in him lies, who refuses to accept what happens and cuts himself off, or who does some unsocial act. You

Do not let the picture of your whole life confound you; do not dwell on all the troubles, in kind and number, that have likely befallen and will befall. Rather, at each present thing ask yourself: what is there in this work that is

Does Panthea now sit by the coffin of Verus, or Pergamus? What — does Chabrias or Diotimus sit by Hadrian's? Absurd. And if they did sit there, would the dead perceive it? And if they perceived it, would they be pleased? And if they were pleased, would the mourners be immortal? Was it not fated that these too become old women and old men first, and then die? And what, afterward, would the dead do when the mourners were gone? It is all stench of

If you can see keenly, see — and judge, as the sage says, by the wisest judgments.

In the constitution of the rational creature I see no virtue set in opposition to justice; but I do see one set against pleasure: self-control.

If you take away your own opinion about what seems to pain you, you yourself stand on the most secure ground. 'Who is yourself?' Reason. 'But I am not reason.' So be it. Then let reason itself not pain itself; and if some other part of you is in a bad way, let it form its own opinion about itself.

A hindrance of sense-perception is an evil to the animal nature. A hindrance of impulse is likewise an evil to the animal nature. (And there is something else that is similarly a hindrance and evil to the constitution of plants.) So then a hindrance of mind is an evil to the intelligent nature. Apply all this now to yourself. Do pain and pleasure touch you? Let sense-perception see to it. Has an obstacle met your impulse? If you set out without reservation, then this is at once an evil to you as a rational being; but if you take what is common to all, you are not yet harmed nor even hindered. The things proper to the mind, indeed, no one else is wont to hinder: fire does not touch it, nor steel, nor a tyrant, nor abuse, nor anything whatsoever, once it has become 'a sphere rounded into stillness.'

I am not worthy to give myself pain; for I have never willingly given pain to another.

One thing gladdens one man, another another. It gladdens me if I keep the ruling faculty healthy — not turning away from any human being nor from anything that befalls human beings, but seeing everything with kindly eyes, receiving and using each thing according to its worth.

See that you bestow this present time on yourself. Those who rather pursue fame in the future do not reckon that the men of that time will be just like these whom they find so burdensome now — and those too will be mortal. What is it to you, in the end, if they echo your name in such-and-such voices, or hold such-and-such an opinion about you?

Take me up and cast me where you will; for there I shall keep my own spirit gracious — that is, content, if it can hold itself and act in accord with what follows from its own constitution. Is this thing worth it — that on its account my soul should be in a bad state, worse than itself: abased, craving, cringing,

Nothing can happen to any human being that is not an incident proper to humans, nor to an ox that is not proper to oxen, nor to a vine that is not proper to vines, nor to a stone that is not the stone's own. If, then, what happens to each is both customary and natural, why should you be discontented? The common nature has brought you nothing you cannot bear.

If you are pained because of something external, it is not that thing which troubles you, but your own judgment about it — and it is in your power to wipe that out this moment. But if what pains you is something in your own disposition, who prevents you from correcting the doctrine? And likewise, if you are pained that you are not doing some particular thing that seems sound to you — why not rather do it than be pained?

'But something too strong stands in the way.' Then do not be

Remember that the ruling faculty becomes unconquerable when, gathered into itself, it is content with itself, doing nothing it does not will — even when its stand is unreasonable. How much more, then, when it judges about something with reason and circumspection? On this account the understanding free of passions is a citadel; for man has nothing more secure, to which he can flee and remain thereafter beyond capture. He who has not seen this is untaught; he who has seen it and does not flee to it — unfortunate.

Say no more to yourself than what the first impressions report. It is reported that so-and-so speaks ill of you. This is reported; but that you have been harmed is not reported. I see that the child is sick. I see it; but that he is in danger, I do not see. So remain always with the first impressions, add nothing to them from within — and nothing happens to you. Or rather, add something: as one who knows each of the things that come to pass in the world.

The bitter cucumber? Drop it. Brambles in the path? Turn aside. It is enough; do not add, 'And why do such things exist in the world?' — for you will be laughed at by the student of nature, just as you would be laughed at by the carpenter and the cobbler if you reproached them because you see shavings and offcuts of their work in the shop. And yet they have somewhere to throw the scraps, while the nature of the whole has nothing outside itself. The wonder of her craft is just this: having set her own bounds, she changes into herself everything within that seems to be decaying and growing old and useless, and out of these same things she makes other new ones — so that she needs no substance from outside, nor any place to cast her refuse. She is content with her own room, her own material, and her own craft.

Remember that to change your mind and to follow the one who sets you right are equally acts of freedom. For the action is yours, carried through according to your own impulse and judgment — indeed, according to your own mind.

This too tends against vainglory: that you can no longer claim to have lived your whole life as a philosopher, or even your life since youth; to many others, and to yourself as well, it has become plain that you are far from philosophy. You have been muddled, then — so that to acquire the reputation of a philosopher is no longer easy for you; and your station in life fights against it too. If, then, you have truly seen where the matter lies, put away the question of how you will appear, and be content if you live the remainder of your life, whatever its length, as your nature wills. Consider, then, what it wills, and let nothing else distract you. For you have made trial and wandered through how many things without finding the good life anywhere — not in syllogisms, not in wealth, not in reputation, not in enjoyment — nowhere. Where, then, is it? In doing what man's nature seeks. And how will a man do this? If he holds doctrines from which his impulses and actions flow. What doctrines? Those concerning goods and evils: that nothing is good for a man which does not make him just, temperate, courageous, free; and nothing evil which does not produce the opposites of these.

He who does not know that the cosmos exists does not know where he is. He who does not know for what purpose the cosmos exists does not know who he is, nor what the cosmos is. He who has left out any one of these things could not even say for what purpose he himself exists. What, then, do you make of the man who flees or pursues the applause of clappers who know neither where they are nor who they are?

Do you wish to be praised by a man who curses himself three times an hour? Do you wish to please a man who does not please himself? Does a

No longer merely breathe with the surrounding air — now think with the intelligence that surrounds all things. For the intelligent power is poured out everywhere, and pervades all things, no less for the one willing to draw it in than the airy element for the one able to breathe.

Wickedness in general harms the cosmos in nothing; and wickedness in particular harms no one but the man himself — to whom it is granted to be rid of it the very moment he himself wills.

To my power of choice the choice of my neighbor is exactly as indifferent as his breath and his flesh. For however much we came into being for one another's sake, still the ruling faculty of each of us has its own sovereignty. Otherwise my neighbor's wickedness would have been my evil — and god did not see fit that my misfortune should depend

The sun seems to be poured down, and indeed it is poured in every direction, yet not poured out; for this pouring is an extension. So too the understanding should be poured forth and diffused — not poured away, but extended; and against the obstacles it meets it should make no violent or headlong thrust, nor collapse, but stand firm and illumine that which receives it; for whatever does not transmit the light deprives itself of the radiance.

He who fears death fears either the absence of all sensation or a sensation of a different kind. But if there shall be no more sensation, you will feel no evil; and if you shall acquire a different sensation, you will be a different living being, and will not have ceased to live.

Men have come into being for one another's sake. So either teach them, or bear with them.

An arrow moves one way, the mind another. Yet the mind, even when it is wary and turns about in inquiry, moves no less straight toward what lies before it.

Enter into the ruling faculty of each man, and allow every other man, likewise, to enter into your own.

He who does injustice is impious. For since the nature of the whole has framed the rational creatures for one another's sake — to benefit each other according to worth, and in no way to harm — he who transgresses her will is plainly impious toward the most venerable of the gods. And he who lies is also impious toward the same goddess; for she is named Truth, and is the first cause of all things true. The willing liar is impious insofar as, by deceiving, he does injustice; the unwilling, insofar as he is out of tune with the nature of the whole and creates disorder by fighting against the nature of the cosmos — for he fights against it who is carried, of himself, contrary to the truth, since he had received from nature the resources whose neglect now leaves him unable to distinguish the false from the true. Moreover, he who pursues pleasures as goods and flees pains as evils is impious; for such a man must often blame the common nature for distributing to the worthless and to the good against their desert — since the worthless are often in pleasures and possess what produces them, while the good fall into pain and what produces pain. And further, he who fears pain will some day fear something that must come to pass in the cosmos — and that is already impiety; and he who pursues pleasures will not hold back from injustice — and that is plainly impious. Toward those things to which the common nature is indifferent — for she would not have made both if she were not indifferent to both — toward these, those who would follow nature must hold the same mind and be likewise indifferent. Whoever, then, is not himself indifferent to pain and

It would have been the part of a more graceful man to depart from among men untouched by falsehood and all pretense and luxury and vanity. But to breathe one's last when one has had one's fill of these is the second-best voyage. Or have you chosen to sit down with vice — and does experience not yet persuade you to flee the plague? For corruption of the understanding is a plague far more than any such tainting and shifting of the air poured around us. The one is a plague of

Do not despise death, but be well pleased with it, since this too is one of the things nature wills. For as it is to be young and to grow old, to increase and to reach one's prime, to cut teeth and grow a beard and turn gray, to beget, to carry, and to bring forth, and all the other natural operations the seasons of life bring — such also is dissolution itself. It belongs to a reasoning man, then, to be neither careless nor impatient nor disdainful toward death, but to await it as one of nature's operations; and as you now await the hour when the child will come forth from your wife's womb, so await the hour in which your little soul will drop from this husk. And if you want also a homely rule that goes to the heart, what will most reconcile you to death is to consider the things you will be parted from, and the kinds of character with which your soul will no longer be entangled. One must not take offense at men — rather care for them and bear them gently — yet remember that your release will not be from men who share your principles. For this alone, if anything, could pull us back and bind us to life: to be allowed to live with those who hold the same doctrines. But as it is, you see how great the weariness is in the discord of life lived together — so that you say: come quicker, death, lest somehow I too forget myself.

The sinner sins against himself; the doer of injustice does injustice to himself — making himself evil.

He often does injustice who fails to do something — not only the one who does something.

These suffice: the present judgment grasping its object, the present action for the common good, and the present disposition well pleased with everything that happens from the cause outside.

Wipe out the impression; halt the impulse; quench the desire; keep the ruling faculty in your own power.

Among the irrational animals one life-soul is distributed; among the rational, one intelligent soul has been portioned out — just as there is one earth for all things earthy, and we see by one light and breathe one air, all of us that see and live.

All things that share in something common hasten toward what is of their own kind. Everything earthy inclines toward the earth; everything watery flows together; the airy likewise — so that they need things to hold them apart, and force. Fire is borne upward because of the elemental fire, but it is so ready to be kindled along with all fire here below that everything material which is a little drier catches easily, because less of

Man bears fruit, and god, and the cosmos — each bears in its proper season. If usage has worn the word down to the vine and the like, no matter. Reason has its fruit, both common and particular; and from it come other such things as reason itself is.

If you can, teach them better; if not, remember that kindliness was given you for just this. The gods too are kindly to such men, and even cooperate with them toward some things — toward health, toward wealth, toward fame: so

Labor, not as one wretched, nor as wanting to be pitied or admired. Rather, will one thing only: to move and to hold back as the reason of the city requires.

Today I escaped from every circumstance — or rather, I cast out every circumstance; for it was not outside me, but within, in my judgments.

All things are the same: familiar in experience, ephemeral in time, filthy in their material. Everything now is just as it was in the days of those we have buried.

Things stand outside our doors, themselves by themselves, knowing nothing of themselves and declaring nothing. What is it, then, that declares about them? The ruling faculty.

Not in feeling but in activity lies the evil and the good of the rational and civic creature — just as its virtue and its vice lie not in feeling but in activity.

For the stone thrown upward it is no evil to be carried down, nor any good to be carried up.

Pass inside, into their ruling faculties, and you will see what kind of judges you fear — and what kind of judges they are even of themselves.

All things are in change; and you yourself are in continual alteration and, in a sense, decay — and the whole cosmos likewise.

Another's wrongdoing must be left where it is.

An ending of activity, a pause of impulse and of judgment — a death, as it were: no evil. Pass now to the ages of life — childhood, boyhood, youth, old age: every change of these is a death. Was it anything terrible? Pass now to the life you lived under your grandfather, then under your mother, then under your father; and finding there many other dissolutions and changes and endings, ask yourself: was it anything terrible? So then, neither is the ending and pause and change of your whole life.

Run to your own ruling faculty, and to that of the whole, and to that of this man. To your own, that you may make it a mind that loves justice; to that of the whole, that you may recall of what you are a part; to this man's, that you may learn whether it was ignorance or intent — and at the same time reflect that he is your kin.

As you yourself are a completing part of the civic system, so let

Children's quarrels and children's games, and 'poor breaths carrying corpses' — so that the scene of the Calling of the Dead strikes one all the more vividly.

Go to the quality of the cause; mark it off from the material and contemplate it; then set the bounds of the time which this individual quality is fitted by nature, at the longest, to subsist.

You have endured ten thousand things because you were not content with your ruling faculty doing the kinds of things it was framed to do. But enough.

When another blames you or hates you, or men give voice to anything of that kind, go to their poor souls; pass inside, and see what kind of people they are. You will see that you need not strain yourself that they should hold this or that opinion about you. Yet you must be well disposed toward them; for by nature they are friends. And the gods, too, help them in all sorts of ways — through dreams, through oracles — toward the very things, after all, about which they care.

The cycles of the cosmos are the same — up, down, from age to age. And either the mind of the whole sets out toward each particular thing — and if that is so, accept what it sets in motion — or it set out once, and the rest follows by way of consequence — and why, then, do you strain? And as for the whole: if god, all is well; if random chance — atoms, in a way, or indivisibles — do not you also be random. In a moment the earth will cover us all; then it too will change, and what comes of that will change to infinity, and that again to infinity. For a man who considers these waves upon waves of change and alteration, and their speed, will despise everything mortal.

The cause of the whole is a winter torrent: it carries everything. Man, what then? Do what nature now demands; set out, if it is given you, and do not look around to see whether anyone will know. Do not hope for Plato's Republic — be content if the smallest thing goes forward, and consider the outcome of even this no small matter. For who can change their doctrines? And without a change of doctrines, what is there but the slavery of men groaning and pretending to obey? Go now and talk to me of Alexander and Philip and Demetrius of Phalerum. I will follow them if they saw what the common nature wills and schooled themselves; but if they merely strutted the tragic stage, no one has condemned me to imitate them. Simple and modest is the work of philosophy: do not lead me off into pomposity.

View from above: the countless herds, the countless rites, every kind of voyage in storm and calm, the diversity of beings coming into existence, joining together, passing away. Think also of the life lived by others long ago, and the life that will be lived after you, and the life now being lived among the barbarian nations; and how many do not even know your name, how many will most quickly forget it, how many who perhaps praise you now will most quickly blame you. And that neither memory is worth anything, nor fame, nor anything else whatsoever, taken all together.

Imperturbability with regard to what comes to pass from the cause outside; justice in what is done according to the cause within you. That is: impulse and action ending in the social act itself, because this for you is according to nature.

You can strip away many superfluous things that trouble you, since they rest entirely on your own judgment; and you will at once make wide room for yourself — by encompassing the

All that you see will most quickly perish, and those who watched it perishing will themselves most quickly perish too; and the man who dies in extreme old age will be brought to the same state as the one who died before his time.

What are the ruling faculties of these men — what kinds of things have they been earnest about, for what reasons do they love and honor? Imagine that you see their poor souls naked. When they think their blame harms or their praise profits — what conceit!

Loss is nothing other

The rottenness of the material underlying each thing: water, dust, little bones, stench. Or again: marble — calluses of the earth; gold and silver — sediments; clothing — hairs; purple — blood; and everything else of the same kind. And the breath, too, is another thing of this sort — changing out of these things into these.

Enough of this wretched life, this murmuring, this aping! Why are you disturbed? What is new in any of this? What drives you out of your senses? The cause? Look at it. The material, then? Look at it. Outside these there is nothing. But toward the gods — now at last become simpler and better.

To have observed these things for a hundred years, or for three, comes to the same.

If he did wrong, the evil is there, with him. But perhaps he did not do wrong. Either all things come upon us from one intelligent source, as in a single body, and the part must not blame what comes to pass for the sake of the whole — or there are atoms, and nothing but medley and dispersion. Why, then, are you disturbed? Say to your ruling faculty: are you dead, are you corrupted, have you turned beast, do you play a part, do you herd, do you graze with the flock?

Either the gods have power or they have no power. If they have no power, why do you pray? But if they have power, why do you not rather pray that they grant you neither to fear any of these things, nor to desire any of them, nor to grieve over any of them — rather than that some one of them be absent or present? For surely, if they can cooperate with men at all, they can cooperate toward these things. But perhaps you will say: the gods have put these things in my own power. Then is it not better to use what is in your power as a free man, than to strain

Epicurus says: 'In my illness my conversations were not about the sufferings of my poor body, nor did I chatter of such things to those who visited me; rather I went on discussing the principal points of natural philosophy, dwelling on this very question — how the mind, while sharing in such motions of the flesh, remains untroubled, guarding its own proper good. Nor did I give the physicians occasion,' he says, 'to put on airs as if they were doing something great; but my life went on well and finely.' Do, then, as he did — in illness, if you are ill, and in any other circumstance; for it is common to every school not to desert philosophy amid whatever befalls, and not to join the babble of the layman ignorant of nature. Be wholly with the work now being done, and with the instrument by which you do it.

When you run against someone's shamelessness, ask yourself at

Will you ever, O my soul, be good and simple and one and naked — plainer to see than the body that surrounds you? Will you ever taste the loving and affectionate disposition? Will you ever be full and without want, longing for nothing, desiring nothing, animate or inanimate, for the enjoyment of pleasures? Nor time, in which to enjoy them longer? Nor place or country or pleasant climate? Nor congenial company? Will you instead be content with your present condition, and pleased with all that is present — persuading yourself that all things are yours from the gods, and that all is well and will be well with you which is dear to them, and which they are going to give for the preservation of the perfect living being:

Observe what your nature seeks, insofar as you are governed by mere nature; then do it and accept it, unless your nature as an animal will thereby be made worse. Next observe what your nature as an animal seeks, and take all of this, unless your nature as a rational animal will thereby be made worse. And the rational is at once also civic. Use these

Everything that happens either happens in such a way that you are framed by nature to bear it, or in such a way that you are not. If, then, it happens as you are framed to bear it, do not complain — bear it as you were framed to. But if as you are not framed to bear it, do not complain — for it will finish you off first. Remember, however, that you are framed by nature to bear everything which it lies with your own judgment to make bearable and endurable, by representing to yourself that doing so is to your advantage or your duty.

If he is going astray, teach him kindly, and show him what he has overlooked. If you cannot — blame yourself, or not even yourself.

Whatever happens to you was prepared for you from eternity beforehand; and the interweaving of causes spun together, from everlasting, both your own subsistence and this event's befalling.

Whether atoms or nature, let this stand first: I am a part of the whole, which is governed by nature; and next: I stand in a close relation to the parts that are of my own kind. For remembering these things — insofar as I am a part, I shall be discontent with nothing assigned out of the whole; for nothing is harmful to the part which is advantageous to the whole. The whole contains nothing that does not advantage itself: all natures have this in common, and the nature of the cosmos has this besides, that no cause from outside can compel it to generate anything harmful to itself. By remembering, then, that I am a part of such a whole, I shall be well pleased with everything that comes of it. And insofar as I stand in close relation to the parts of my own kind, I will do nothing unsocial; rather I will aim at my own kind, direct every impulse toward the common advantage, and draw it away from the contrary. With these things accomplished so, life must flow well — just as you would conceive the life of a citizen flowing well who goes forward through acts that profit his fellow citizens, and welcomes whatever the city assigns.

The parts of the whole — all that the cosmos naturally contains — must perish; let this be said in the sense of being altered. Now if perishing were by nature an evil for them as well as necessary, the whole could not go on well, with its parts forever passing into alteration, framed as they are to perish in their different ways. (Did nature herself undertake to do evil to her own parts, making them both exposed to evil and bound by necessity to fall into it — or did such things come to pass without her noticing? Either is incredible.) But even if a man should set 'nature' aside and explain

Having given yourself these names — good, self-respecting, true, sane-minded, fellow-minded, high-minded — see that you are never renamed; and if you forfeit these names, return to them quickly. And remember that 'sane-minded' was meant to signify a discerning attention to each thing, and freedom from carelessness; 'fellow-minded,' a willing acceptance of what the common nature assigns; and 'high-minded,' the rising of the thinking part above the smooth or rough movement of the flesh, above the scrap of fame, above death, and all such

Farce, war, flutter, torpor, slavery! Day by day those sacred doctrines of yours will be wiped out, whenever you imagine things without studying nature, and let them pass. You must rather see and do everything in such a way that at one and the same time the demand of circumstance is completed, the contemplative power is exercised, and the confidence that comes from knowledge of each thing is preserved — quiet, but not concealed. For when will you enjoy simplicity? When dignity? When the knowledge of each thing — what it is in essence, what place it holds in the cosmos, how long it is naturally fitted to subsist, of what it is compounded, to whom it can belong, and who can give it and take it away?

A spider is proud when it has caught a fly; one man, when he has caught a poor hare; another, a sprat in a net; another, piglets; another, bears; another, Sarmatians. Are these not bandits, if you examine their doctrines?

Acquire a method of contemplating how all things change into one another; attend to it continually, and exercise yourself thoroughly in this part of philosophy — for nothing is so productive of greatness of mind. Such a man has put off the body; and recognizing that in almost no time he must leave all these things behind and depart from among men, he has given himself up wholly to justice in what is done by himself, and to the nature of the whole in everything else that happens. What anyone will say or suppose about him, or do against him — on this he does not spend a thought, being content with these two things: to act justly in what is now being done, and to love what is now assigned to him. He has laid aside all busyness and all striving, and he wishes nothing else than to go the straight way through the law and, going the straight way, to follow god.

What need of suspicion at all, when it is in your power to consider what ought to be done? If you see your way clearly, go along it kindly, without turning back; if you do not see it, hold back and use the best counselors. And if other things obstruct these counsels, go forward according to the resources you now have, reasoning it out, holding fast to what appears just. For it is best to attain that — since failure, at least, should be failure of that aim. The man who follows reason in everything is at once at leisure and quick to act, at once cheerful and composed.

Ask yourself, the

To nature, who gives all things and takes them back, the educated and self-respecting man says: give what you will; take back what you will. And he says it without bravado — in obedience only, and in good will toward her.

Small is this remnant of life. Live as on a mountain; for it makes no difference whether there or here, if everywhere a man lives in the cosmos as in a city. Let men see, let them observe, a true man living according to nature. If they cannot bear him, let them kill him — for that is better than to live as they do.

No longer talk at all about what kind of man the good man is — but be one.

Continually picture to yourself the whole of time and the whole of substance — and that all particular things, against substance, are a fig-seed; against time, the turn of a drill.

Pausing at each thing that exists, conceive of it as already dissolving, in change, in a kind of rotting or scattering — each thing dying in the way of its own nature.

What they are like eating, sleeping, coupling, relieving themselves, and the rest! Then what they are like lording it over men, preening themselves, or raging and rebuking from on high. A moment ago they were slaves to how many men, and for what ends — and in a moment they will be in such hands again.

What the nature of the whole brings to each is of advantage to each; and it is of advantage at just the time she brings it.

'The earth loves the rain'; and 'the holy aether loves' to fall. The cosmos, too, loves to make whatever is going to be. To the cosmos, then, I say: I love along with you. Is not this also the sense of the common phrase, 'this loves to happen'?

Either you live on here, and you are already accustomed to it; or you go elsewhere, and this you willed yourself; or you die, and your service is discharged. Beyond these there is nothing. Therefore — be of good heart.

Let it be always plain

What is my ruling faculty to me? And what kind of thing am I making of it now? And to what end am I using it now? Is it empty of mind? Is it loosed and torn away from fellowship? Is it melted into and mixed up with the poor flesh, so that it shifts along with it?

He who flees his master is a runaway. Now the law is master, and so the transgressor of law is a runaway. So likewise he who grieves or is angry or afraid is wishing that something which has come to pass, or is coming, or is to come, were not among the things ordained by that which governs all — and that is law, apportioning to each what falls to him. He, then, who fears or grieves or is angry — is a runaway.

A man drops seed into a womb and goes away; and thereafter another cause takes it over and works upon it, and completes an infant. Out of what a beginning, what a result! Again: he lets food down through the throat; and thereafter another cause takes it over and makes sensation and impulse — in sum, life and strength and other things how many and how strange. Contemplate, then, these things that come to pass in such concealment; and see the power as we see the power that pulls downward and the power that tends upward — not with the eyes, but no less clearly.

Consider continually how all things such as are happening now happened before as well; and consider that

Picture every man who grieves or is discontented at anything as like the pig at the sacrifice, kicking and squealing. Like it, too, is the man who groans on his little bed alone, in silence. Think of the chain we are bound by — and that to the rational creature alone has it been given to follow what happens willingly, while merely to follow is necessity for all.

Pausing at each particular thing you do, ask yourself whether death is terrible because it deprives you of this.

When you take offense at someone's wrongdoing, pass over at once and reckon up what similar wrong you yourself commit — such as judging money to be a good, or pleasure, or the scrap of fame, and so by kinds. For attending to this, you will quickly forget your anger — the thought striking you that he is compelled. For what else can he do? Or, if you can, remove what compels him.

When you see Satyrion the Socratic, picture Eutyches or Hymen; when you see Euphrates, picture

What material, what an opportunity you are fleeing! For what are all these things but exercises for reason — reason that has looked precisely, and as a student of nature, at the things in life? Stay, then, until you have made these things too your own — as the strong

Let it be in no one's power to say truthfully of you that you are not simple, or that you are not good; let anyone who supposes either of these things about you be a liar. And all this rests with you — for who prevents you from being good and simple? Only judge that you will no longer live if you are not such a man; for reason, too, does not require the living of one who is not.

What, upon this given material, can be done or said in the soundest way? Whatever it is, it is in your power to do it or to say it — and make no excuse that you are prevented.

You will not cease groaning before you feel this: that what luxury is to the pleasure-lovers, doing the things proper to man's constitution, upon the material put before you and falling in your way, is for you. For one must conceive as enjoyment everything one is able to do according to one's own nature — and everywhere it is possible. Now the cylinder is not everywhere granted to move with its own motion, nor is water, nor fire, nor the other things governed by mere nature or by an irrational soul — for the things that bar and obstruct them are many. But mind and reason are able to go through

For the man bitten by true doctrines, even the briefest and most familiar saying is reminder enough against grief and fear — such as: 'Leaves — some the wind scatters to the ground; such is the generation of men.' Little leaves are your children too; little leaves these men who shout so credibly and applaud — or, on the contrary, curse, or quietly blame and mock; little leaves likewise those who will receive and pass on the fame that comes after. For all of them 'come forth in the season of spring'; then the wind has thrown them down, and the forest grows others in their place. Brief life is common to all — yet you flee and pursue all things as though they were to be eternal. A little while and you will close your eyes; and the one who carries you out will presently be mourned by another.

The healthy eye must look at everything visible, and not say 'I want the green things' — for that is the mark of a diseased eye. And healthy hearing and smell must be ready for everything audible and smellable; and the healthy stomach must stand toward all

Make it your habit, at everything done by anyone, so far as possible to inquire within yourself: to what does this man refer this act? But begin with yourself, and examine yourself first. Remember that what pulls the strings is that which is hidden within: that is persuasion, that is life — that, if one may say so, is the man. Never include in your imagining the vessel that surrounds it and these little organs molded round it; they are like the workman's adze, differing only in being attached and grown to us. Since indeed these parts are of no more use without the cause that moves them and holds them still than the shuttle to the weaver, the pen to the writer, or the whip to the charioteer.

The properties of the rational soul: it sees itself, articulates itself, makes itself such as it wills, reaps

You will despise charming song and dance and the pancration, if you cut the melodic line into its single notes and ask yourself, at each one: is this what masters me? You will shrink from owning it. With dance do the like for each movement and pose, and the same with the pancration. In sum: virtue and what flows from virtue aside, remember to run to the parts of things, and by dividing them come to despise them — and carry the same method over to the whole of life.

What a soul it is that stands ready, if it must this moment be released from the body — whether to be extinguished, or scattered, or to persist. But let this readiness come from its own judgment, not from bare opposition like the Christians; let it come considered, dignified, and — so as to persuade another — without theatrics.

Have I done something social? Then I have been benefited. Let this meet you always, ready at hand — and nowhere cease.

What is your art? To be good. And how is this achieved except by contemplations — some concerning the nature of the whole, others concerning the proper constitution of man?

First tragedies were brought on, reminders of what happens — that these things naturally come to pass so, and that what charms you on the stage should not weigh on you on the greater stage. For you see that these things must be carried through thus, and that even those who cry 'O Cithaeron!' bear them. And some things are said usefully by the makers of drama; above all, for instance: 'If I and my two sons are neglected by the gods, this too has its reason'; and again: 'It avails not to be angry at events'; and: 'Reap life like a fruitful ear of grain'; and the like. After tragedy the Old Comedy was brought on, with a schoolmaster's freedom of speech, usefully reminding men of plainness by its very bluntness — to which

How vividly it strikes one that there is no station in life so well suited to the practice of philosophy as this one in which you now find yourself!

A branch cut off from its neighboring branch cannot but be cut off from the whole tree. So too a man, severed from one single man, has fallen away from the whole community. Now a branch is cut off by another; but a man separates himself from his neighbor — by hating him, by turning away — and does not know that he has at the same time cut himself off from the whole commonwealth. Except that there is this gift of Zeus, who constituted the community: it is open to us to grow back to our neighbor, and again to become completing parts of the whole. Yet when such separation happens often, it makes the part that withdraws hard to unite and hard to restore. In general, the branch that sprouted with the tree and

As those who stand in your way as you advance by right reason will not be able to turn you from sound action, so let them not strike you out of your kindness toward them. Guard yourself equally on both fronts: not only in steady judgment and action, but in gentleness toward those who try to hinder you or are otherwise difficult. For to be harsh with

No nature is inferior to art; for the arts imitate natures. If that is so, then the most perfect and comprehensive of all natures cannot fall short of the inventiveness of craft. Now all arts make the lower for the sake of the higher; therefore the common nature does so too. And hence is the birth of justice, and from justice the rest of the virtues have their existence; for justice will not be preserved if we are anxious about things indifferent, or easily deceived, or rash, or changeable.

Things do not come to you — the things whose pursuit and avoidance throw you into turmoil; rather, in a way, you go to them. Let your judgment about them, at any rate, be still, and they too will stay unmoved — and you will be seen neither pursuing nor fleeing.

The soul a sphere holding its own form: when it neither stretches out toward anything nor shrinks inward, neither scatters nor sinks down, but shines with the light by which it sees the truth of all things and the truth within itself.

Will someone despise me? Let him see to it. I will see to it that I not be found doing or saying anything worthy of contempt. Will he hate me? Let him see to it. But I will be kind and well-disposed to every man, and ready to show this very man what he overlooks — not reproachfully, nor as displaying my forbearance, but sincerely and generously, like the famous Phocion (if indeed he was not putting it on). For the inward parts should be such; and a man should be seen by the gods disposed to no indignation, no grievance. For what evil is it to you, if you yourself are now doing the thing proper to your own nature, and accepting what is now seasonable to the nature of the whole — a man stretched toward this: that the common benefit be brought about by one means or another?

Despising one another, they flatter one another; and wishing to rise above one another, they bow down to one another.

How rotten and counterfeit is the man who says: I have chosen to deal plainly with you. What are you doing, man? This needs no announcing. It will appear of itself — it ought to be written on the forehead. It sounds at once in the voice, it shines at once from the eyes, as the beloved knows everything at once in the glance of lovers. The simple and good man should be, in

To live out life in the noblest way — this power lies in the soul, if a man is indifferent toward things indifferent. And he will be indifferent if he contemplates each of them divided into its parts and as a whole, and remembers that none of them creates our opinion about it, nor comes to us; the things stand still — it is we who generate the judgments about them and, as it were, write them upon ourselves, though it is open to us not to write them, and open, if one slips in unnoticed, to wipe it out at once. Remember too that such attention will be needed only a little while, and then life will have ended. And what difficulty, after all, do these things hold? If they are according to nature, rejoice in them and they will be easy for you; if contrary to nature, seek what accords with your own nature and press toward that, even if it brings no glory — for every man is pardoned for seeking his own good.

Of each thing ask: whence has it come, of what materials does it consist, into what does it change, what will it be when changed — and that it will suffer no evil in the changing.

First: what is my relation to them? We came into being for one another's sake; and, on another reckoning, I came to stand at their head, as the ram heads the flock and the bull the herd. Go back further, from this principle: if not atoms, then nature governs the whole; if so, the lower are for the sake of the higher, and the higher for one another. Second: what kind of men they are at table, in bed, and elsewhere; above all, what compulsions of opinion lie upon them — and with what pride they do these very things. Third: that if they do these things rightly, one must not be vexed; and if not rightly, then plainly they act unwillingly and in ignorance — for every soul is deprived unwillingly, as of truth, so also of the power of treating each man according to his worth; at any rate they smart at being called unjust, ungracious, grasping, and in a word wrongdoers toward their neighbors. Fourth: that you too do much wrong yourself, and are another such as they; and if you do hold back from certain wrongs, still you carry the disposition that inclines to them — even if cowardice, or care for reputation, or some other such meanness keeps you from committing the like. Fifth: that you have not even fully grasped whether they are doing wrong; for many things are done as part of some larger management — and in general a man must learn a great deal before he can declare with comprehension upon another's action. Sixth: when you are exceedingly indignant or even suffering over it — that man's life is a moment, and in a little while we are all laid out. Seventh: that it is not their actions that trouble us — those rest in their ruling faculties — but our own opinions. Remove the opinion, will the judgment 'terrible' away, and the anger has gone. How remove it? By reckoning that what was done is no shame to you; for unless shame alone is evil, you too must do

There are four turnings of the ruling faculty against which you must keep constant guard, and which you must wipe out when detected, saying in each case: this impression is not necessary; this one dissolves community; this you are not about to say from yourself — and consider that not speaking from

Your breath-like part and all the fiery part mixed into you, though by nature borne upward, nevertheless obey the ordering of the whole and are held down here in the compound. And the earthy in you, all of it, and the moist, though borne downward, nevertheless are raised up and hold a station not naturally their own. So even the elements obey the whole — when stationed anywhere, they remain under constraint until the signal of dissolution sounds for them again from the same source. Is it not strange, then, that only your intelligent part should be disobedient and indignant at its own station? Yet nothing violent is laid upon it — only what accords with its nature; and still it will not endure, but is carried the opposite way. For the movement toward injustice and self-indulgence, toward angers and griefs and fears, is nothing but the movement of one deserting nature. And whenever the ruling faculty is discontented with anything that happens, then too it deserts its post; for it was framed for holiness and piety toward the gods no less than for justice — these too are forms of good fellowship, indeed elder than acts of justice.

'He who has not one and the same aim of life, always, cannot be one and the same through the whole of life.' The saying does not suffice unless you add of what kind this aim should be. For as the conception of all the things that seem good to the many in whatever way is not uniform, but only the conception of certain ones — those, namely, that concern the common good — so the aim we set up must be the social and civic aim. For he who directs all his own impulses to this will render all his actions alike, and thereby will always be the same man.

The mountain mouse and the house mouse — and the fright and

Socrates used to call the opinions of the many 'Lamias' — bogeys to frighten children.

The Spartans, at their public spectacles, set seats for strangers in the shade; they themselves sat where they could.

Socrates, to Perdiccas, on why he would not come to his court: 'Lest I perish by the worst of deaths' — that is, lest I receive favors and be unable to return them.

In the writings of the Epicureans there stood a precept: to remind oneself continually of one of the men of old who practiced virtue.

The Pythagoreans: at dawn, look up to the sky — that we may be reminded of those bodies that forever accomplish their work in the same way and after the same fashion; and of their order, and purity, and nakedness. For a star wears no veil.

Think of Socrates with the sheepskin girded round him, when Xanthippe had taken his cloak and gone out — and what Socrates said to his companions when they drew back in embarrassment at seeing him dressed so.

In writing and reading you will not give rules before you have first been ruled. Much more so in life.

'You are a slave born; speech is not for you.'

'And my dear heart laughed within me.'

'And they will blame virtue, taunting her with harsh words.'

To look for a fig in winter is a madman's act; such is he who looks for his child when it is no longer given.

Epictetus said that as

The unripe grape, the ripe cluster, the raisin: all changes — not into not-being, but into not-being-now.

'No one can rob us of our choice' — the saying of Epictetus.

He said: 'One must find an art of assent; and in the sphere of the impulses, keep close watch that they be with reservation, that they be social, that they be according to worth; and abstain wholly from desire, and use aversion toward nothing that is not in our power.'

'The contest, then,' he said, 'is not over any common matter, but over being mad or not.'

Socrates used to say: 'What do you want? To have the souls of rational beings or of irrational?' 'Of rational.' 'Of what kind of rational — sound or worthless?' 'Sound.' 'Then why do you not seek them?' 'Because we have them.' 'Then why do you fight and quarrel?'

All those things at which you pray to arrive by a roundabout way, you can have now — if you do not begrudge them to yourself. That is: if you leave behind all the past, entrust the future to providence, and direct the present, alone, toward holiness and justice. Holiness, that you may love what is allotted — for nature brought it to you, and you to it. Justice, that freely and without entanglement you may speak the truth and do the things that accord with law and with worth. And let nothing impede you: not another's wickedness, nor opinion, nor

God sees all the ruling faculties bare of their material vessels and husks and dross; for with his own intelligence alone he touches only what has flowed and been channeled out of himself into them. If you too accustom yourself to do this, you will rid yourself of most of your distraction. For will the man who does not look at the surrounding flesh spend his time gazing at dress and house and reputation and all such costume and scenery?

There are three things of which you are composed: a little body, a little breath, and mind. Of these, the first two are yours to the extent that you must care for them; only the third is properly your own. Therefore, if you separate from yourself — that is, from your understanding — whatever others do or say, whatever you yourself have done or said, whatever troubles you as still to come, whatever belongs without your choice to the surrounding body or the connate breath, and whatever the outer swirling vortex whirls around — so that the intellectual power, exempted from the things of fate, lives pure and free by itself, doing what is just, willing what happens, and speaking what is true; if, I say, you separate from this ruling faculty the things that cling to it from attachment, and the times beyond and the times gone by, and make yourself like the sphere of Empedocles, 'rounded, rejoicing in the stillness that surrounds it,' and practice living only what you live — that is, the present — then you will be able to pass at least the remainder of your life until death untroubled, with kindness, and at peace with your own guiding spirit.

I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all other men, yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others. At any rate, if a god appeared to a man, or some wise teacher, and ordered him to think and design nothing within himself that he would not also utter aloud the moment he conceived it, he would not endure it even for a single day. So much more do we stand in awe of our neighbors — of what they will think of us — than of ourselves.

How can it be that the gods, who ordered all things well and with love for mankind, overlooked this one thing: that some men, thoroughly good, who had — as it were — the most dealings with the divine, and through holy works and sacred service had grown most intimate with it, once they have died, never come to be again, but are utterly extinguished? If indeed it is so, be sure of this: had it needed to be otherwise, they would have made it so. For if it were just, it would also be possible; and if according to nature, nature would have brought it about. Therefore from its not being so — if indeed it is not so — let this assure you: it ought not to have come to pass so. For you see yourself that in raising this question you are pleading a case of justice with god; and we would not be arguing thus with the gods unless they were most good and most just. And if that is so, they would not have allowed anything in their ordering of the cosmos to be unjustly and unreasonably neglected.

Practice even what is thought to be hopeless; for the left hand, though idle for other tasks due to lack of habit, holds the bridle more firmly than the right — because it has been trained to do so.

Consider in what state, of body and of soul, one ought to be overtaken by death; the shortness of life; the yawning gulf of time behind and before; the weakness of all matter.

Look at the causal principles stripped of their husks; at the references of actions; at what pain is, what pleasure, what death, what fame; who is not the cause of his own lack of leisure; how no one is impeded by another; and that everything is opinion.

In the use of principles, one should be like a pancratist, not a gladiator; for the gladiator sets aside the sword he uses and is killed; but the wrestler always has his hand and needs nothing more than to flex it.

See things themselves as they are, dividing them into material, cause, and reference.

What power man has: to do nothing except what god will praise, and to receive everything god assigns him as what follows from nature.

The gods are not to be blamed — for they do no wrong, willingly

How ridiculous and out of place is the one who marvels at anything that happens in life.

Either the necessity of destiny and an order that cannot be transgressed; or a providence open to prayer; or a chaos of randomness without a governor. If a necessity that cannot be transgressed, why do you resist? If a providence admitting of propitiation, make yourself worthy of the divine help. If an ungoverned chaos, be glad that in such a surge you have within yourself a governing mind. And if the surge carries you away, let it carry the flesh, the breath, the rest — the mind it will not carry away.

If the lamp shines until it is extinguished and does not shed its light before the end, will the truth,

When something gives you the impression that a man has done wrong: how do I even know that this was a wrong? And if he did do wrong — that he has condemned himself for it already, and so is like a man tearing his own face? Consider that he who would not have the worthless man do wrong is like one who would not have the fig tree bear its juice in the figs, or babies cry, or the horse neigh, or any other thing that must be. What else can he do with such a disposition? If, then, you are so sharp — cure the disposition.

If it is not fitting, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it. For let your impulse be in your own power.

In everything and always, look at what the thing itself is that is producing the impression in you; and

Perceive that you have within yourself something better and more divine than the things that create passions and that pull you entirely like a puppet on strings. What is my mind now? Fear, perhaps? Pretense, perhaps?

First, not randomly or unaccountably. Second, not to refer one's actions to any other end than the social end.

Consider that before long you will be no one and nowhere; and so too with all these things you now see, and all these people now living. For all things are by nature meant to change, to turn, and to perish — that other things may come to be in their succession.

That everything is judgment, and this is in your power. Remove the judgment when you will, and just as when rounding a cape there is calm — all is stable and a waveless bay.

Any single activity, ceasing at its proper season, suffers nothing evil in that it has ceased; nor has the doer of the action suffered anything evil in this respect, that it has ceased. So likewise the system made up of all our actions — which is life — if it cease at its proper season, suffers nothing evil in that it has ceased; nor has he who brought this chain to a timely close been badly dealt with. And the season and the limit are given by nature — sometimes by your own nature, as in old age, but in every case by the nature of the whole, by the changing of whose parts the entire cosmos remains ever young and in its prime. And everything that is advantageous to the whole is always beautiful and in season. The ending of life, then, is no evil to any man — for it is no disgrace, being neither of his choosing nor against the common good; and it is a good, insofar as it is timely for the whole, advantageous to it, and carried along with it. For so he is borne by god who is borne along the same way as god, and toward the same things, in his judgment.

Keep these three thoughts ready at hand. First, concerning what you do: that it be nothing at random, nor otherwise than Justice herself would have acted. And concerning what befalls you from outside: that it is either by chance or by providence — and chance is not to be blamed, nor providence arraigned. Second: what each creature is from seed to ensoulment, and from ensoulment to the giving back of the soul; of what things its composition is, and into what things its dissolution. Third: that if you were suddenly lifted high into the air and looked down on human affairs and their endless variety, you would despise them, seeing at the same time how great a host of beings, of air and of aether, dwells around; and that however often you were lifted up, you would see the same things — uniformity, brevity. And these are the objects of our pride!

Cast out the judgment — you are saved. Who then prevents you from casting it out?

When you bear something hard, you have forgotten that all things come to pass according to the nature of the whole; and that the wrong done belongs to another; and further, that everything that happens always happened so, and will happen so, and is happening so now everywhere; and how great is the kinship of a human being with the whole human race — a community not of blood or seed, but of mind. You have forgotten too that each man's mind is god, and has flowed from there; that nothing is anyone's own, but his little child, his body, his very soul have come from there; that everything is opinion; and that each man lives only the present, and loses only this.

Continually run over in mind those who were furiously indignant at something; the men who reached the heights of fame or calamity or enmity or any kind of fortune. Then pause and ask: where is it all now? Smoke and ash and a tale — or not even a tale. And let every instance of the kind occur to you together: Fabius Catullinus in the country, Lusius Lupus in his gardens, Stertinius at Baiae, Tiberius on Capri, Velius Rufus — in short, obsession with anything whatever, joined with self-conceit. How cheap is everything so strained after; and how much more philosophic it is, on the material given, to render oneself just, temperate, a follower of the gods, with simplicity. For the pride that prides itself on freedom from pride is the most insufferable of all.

To those who ask: 'Where did you see the gods, or from where did you grasp that they exist, that you worship thus?' ...First, they are visible to sight; then, I have not even seen my own soul, and yet I honor it...

The salvation of life: to see each thing throughout its material

There is one light of the sun, even though it is parted by walls, by mountains, by ten thousand other things. There is one common substance, even though it is parted among ten thousand bodies with their individual qualities. There is one soul, even though it is parted among ten thousand natures and individual circumscriptions. There is one intelligent soul, even though it seems to be

What do you seek? To go on existing? Or to have sensation? Impulse? Growth? Ceasing again? Use of speech? Thinking? Which of these seems to you worth the longing? But if each of these is easily despised, go forward to the final thing: to follow reason and god. But honoring those others — grieving that death will deprive one of them — fights against this.

How small a part of infinite and immeasurable time is allotted to each person — for it vanishes swiftly into the eternal. How small a part of all substance; how small a part of the universal soul; what a tiny clod of the whole earth you creep upon.

How does the ruling faculty use itself? For in this lies everything. The rest — whether within our choice or not — are dead and smoke.

Most rousing toward contempt of death is this: even those who judged pleasure a good and pain an evil — even they despised it.

For the man to whom the only good is what comes in due season — for whom it is all the same to render more acts according to right reason or fewer, and to whom it makes no difference whether he beholds the cosmos for a longer or a shorter time — for this man not even death is a thing of fear.

Man, you have been a citizen in this great city. What difference to you whether for five years or fifty? What the laws assign is equal for every man. Why then is it terrible, if it is no tyrant nor unjust judge that sends you out of the city, but the nature that brought you in — as if the praetor who engaged a comic actor should dismiss him from the stage? 'But I have not played the five acts — only three.' Well said: but in life, three acts are the whole play. For he sets the completion who was once the cause of your composition, and is now the cause of your dissolution; and you are the cause of neither. Depart, then, graciously — for he who releases you is gracious.